For the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
vi
Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to many outstanding people whose generosity, insights
and hard work have enriched both the project and myself personally. A
number of exceptional studies on church history and religion in inter-war
Romania have appeared in recent years, finally making a book of this nature
possible. This project has developed in conversation with the members of two
scholarly organizations in particular – the Society for Romanian Studies and
the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture. I have
presented this material at conferences run by both organizations over the years,
receiving valuable feedback from Scott Kenworthy, Jennifer Spock, Matthew
Miller, James Kapaló, Aleksandra Djuri Milovanović, Ryan Voogt, Iemima
Ploşcariu, Iuliana Cindrea and Dumitru Lisnic, among others. Ionuţ Biliuţa,
Anca Şincan and Martin Heale read drafts of the entire manuscript and made
invaluable suggestions for its improvement.
Emanuel Conţac has generously shared documents with me and commented
on earlier versions of Chapter 9, which was originally published in a different
form in Plērōma under his editorship. Philippe Blasen and James Kapaló have
also shared some fascinating resources and discoveries in Romanian archives
that I would otherwise never have come across. Thanks also goes to Dumitru
Lăcătuşu for assisting with the archival research, and to Catherine McManamon,
Mary Dixon, Helen Hall and Kathryn Barnes at the University of Liverpool
Library, who have spent a great deal of their institution’s money locating hardto-find books for me. In Bucharest, I am grateful to the staff at the Library of
the Holy Synod, the Central University Library, the Library of the Romanian
Academy, the Romanian National Archives and the Archives at the National
Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives. They have tirelessly helped
track down materials and generously opened their collections to me. Archives
are no longer only held in hard copy these days, and my task would have been
much harder without the digitized collections at Moldavica, Publicaţii Baptiste,
OasteaDomnului.info, the digital library of the Alexandru D. Xenopol Arad
County Library and the digital library of the ‘Lucian Blaga’ Central University
Library in Cluj.
Acknowledgements
ix
Finally, an ocean of thanks goes to my wife Laura, my daughter Linda and
our parents Geoff, Yvonne and Daniela, for their support, encouragement and
patience while this book was being written.
All Biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.
***
Open Access was made possible by the support of the University of Liverpool,
UK, and for this both the author and Bloomsbury Academic are deeply grateful.
x
Introduction
Ruth Rouse, a former Anglican missionary, spent eight days in Bucharest as
part of a fact-finding journey through Europe for the World Christian Student
Federation at the end of January 1911. She found Romanian attitudes to
religion completely foreign and inexplicable according to the criteria of British
Protestantism. Rouse noted down some of her observations in a report to the
Federation.
Irreligion prevails amongst the educated. I will not say Agnosticism or Atheism:
their irreligion is far too unreasoned and a matter of atmosphere to be classified
under one form of unbelief or another. They have simply no interest in religion,
no idea that it could possibly have significance for any educated person.
Religion is for them dead and gone. Never in any country have I suffered so
from the impression that spiritual ideas, however simply expressed, were simply
not understood. The church of the country is Orthodox, but can do nothing for
educated people. They openly mock at their priests, who are for the most part
low-class men, uneducated, sometimes unable to read, often with no form of
training for their work except ability to read the services, unpaid, venal, because
dependent for their livelihood on fees for religious services, and too often of
bad life.
Yet, with all their contempt for their church, the Roumanians have a
Chauvinistic dread of foreign influence, and do all they can to make missionary
work among them impossible. They are exceedingly suspicious of Roman
Catholicism, which has made some progress. They are suspicious also of
Protestant effort, though in a less degree. Protestant missions are represented
by the Seventh-Day Adventists and Plymouth Brethren. Both have made some
progress, though their missionaries are put over the border as soon as they are
found at work.
Reform movements within the church scarcely exist. There are, however,
some signs of hope. The Roumanian Church possesses one great advantage
over all other Orthodox Churches. The services and the Scriptures are read in
2
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
the language of the people, not in an incomprehensible Archaic tongue. Some
priests are striving after better things … Some earnest laymen are issuing a little
magazine giving very simply religious instruction of a decidedly evangelical
kind. It is rather closely modelled on the magazine issued by the Plymouth
Brethren, and even reproduces its articles, but it is an Orthodox effort.1
Rouse’s reports about her visits to Balkan countries were consistently derogatory
and her language more than a little racist. She wrote about Serbians, for example,
that they had a
fanatical attachment to [the Orthodox Church] as a national institution,
combined with open avowed sceptism [sic] and utter contempt for the priests as
uneducated and corrupt. But whether from a kind of superstition or a primitive
sort of hypocrisy, (the Servians are very primitive in lots of ways) many of them
still seem to go through a certain amount of church attendance.2
The idea that Serbians went to church when Romanians did not gives us an
insight into the reliability of Rouse and other commentators who bemoaned the
lack of Romanian religiosity. Serbians were famous in the Balkans for failing to
attend church services, and Romania had roughly one parish priest for every
900 people, compared to Serbia’s one per 3,000 people.3 Commentaries about
how ‘religious’ a society is are always in the eye of the observer. Knowing what is
going on in someone else’s heart and mind when they close their eyes in prayer
is impossible when you are standing next to them, let alone when we are talking
about entire countries of people who lived a hundred years ago.
Regardless of how accurate Rouse’s negative views about Romanian religiosity
were, such opinions were consistently reiterated by Romanian writers for the
next twenty years. During the late nineteenth century British and American
ideas about what constituted ‘good’ religion came to dominate Romanian public
opinion. According to Western criteria, churches were judged based on how
many people attended weekly worship services, how much they respected their
clergy, how well lay people were able to articulate their beliefs, how fervently
people embraced these beliefs (as expressed through their emotional states)
1
2
3
Ruth Rouse, Report to the World Student Christian Federation, ‘Roumania, 25 January to 2 February
1911’, Lambeth Palace Archives, R. T. Davidson Papers, Student Christian Movement, 1905–25, vol.
491, ff. 50–1.
Rouse, ‘Serbia, 3–7 February 1911’, in ibid., ff. 53–4. On Ruth Rouse, see Ruth Franzén, Ruth Rouse
Among Students: Global, Missiological and Ecumenical Perspectives (Uppsala: Uppsala University,
2008).
Bojan Aleksov, Religious Dissent between the Modern and the National: Nazarenes in Hungary and
Serbia 1850–1914 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), 42 n. 50.
Introduction
3
and how strongly religion shaped believers’ everyday lives. Grigorie Comşa, a
dedicated anti-Protestant evangelist, complained in 1921 that ‘in church life we
see indifference about indifference. We acknowledge painfully that even some
priests are addicted to commerce. No one goes to church anymore; the laws and
commandments of the church are ignored. Adultery is becoming widespread;
the name of God is mocked, the holy mysteries are trodden underfoot, and
sectarianism ravages the land.’ 4 The editors of the church magazine Crucea
(The Cross) introduced their first issue in 1923 by stating that ‘almost everyone
now believes that the Romanian Orthodox Church is incapable of doing its
job’.5 Nicolae Iorga, a well-known atheist, committed nationalist and erudite
historian, concluded the second edition of his two-volume History of the
Romanian Churches (1928) by observing that, at the beginning of the First
World War, ‘following the destruction of its spirit and purpose by the constant
intrusions of the state as [political] parties vied for its control, the Church of
the Romanian Kingdom no longer represents that moral force which once
constituted its glory’.6 Rouse and other commentators point to a general
dissatisfaction with the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) as a social and
spiritual institution, coupled with a deep hostility toward foreigners – and
towards foreign missionaries in particular. At the same time, they noted that
there were efforts by both priests and laypeople to spread ‘evangelical’ ideas
through magazines and newspapers.
Rouse writes that young women in Bucharest welcomed her and were eager
to spend time with her. A chance to speak English and to learn about the West
was worth the time spent answering the questions of this interesting English
woman. Orthodox writers frequently compared themselves to the British when
discussing the merits of their own church.7 An anonymous priest commented
in 1909 that ‘the [religious] questions that are now being discussed in Romania,
the civilized peoples of the West have been discussing for a long time. We have
opened our eyes quite late. But at the end of the day it is a good thing that we
have opened them at all.’ 8 Prominent Orthodox leaders in Bucharest welcomed
the increasing dialogue between the Anglican and Romanian Orthodox
4
5
6
7
8
Gheorghe Comşa, Istoria predicei la români (Bucharest: Tipografia Cărtilor Bisericeşti, 1921), 3.
‘Starea de plâns a Bisericei Ortodocse’, Crucea, 1 March 1923, 6.
Nicolae Iorga, Istoria Bisericii Româneşti şi a vieţii religioase a românilor, vol. 2, 2nd edn (Bucharest:
Saeculum, 2011), 319.
‘Congresul preoţilor’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română, December 1923, 1125.
Un preot de mir, Chestiuni de discutat (Piteşti: Tipografia Transilvania, 1909), 1.
4
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Churches that began in the early 1920s.9 Rouse’s interest in ‘reform movements’,
her position at the intersections between Orthodox and Western Christianity,
her discussions of lay spirituality and her observations about the Orthodox use
of Protestant literature all lie at the heart of this book.
Rouse was not imagining the productive relationship between these religious
currents. She visited Archimandrite Iuliu Scriban while she was in Bucharest,
who was the director of the Central Theological Seminary in Bucharest. ‘He is
a remarkable man’, Rouse wrote, ‘full of both spiritual and intellectual power’.
He is, perhaps, the only priest in Roumania who has entered the priesthood
from a sense of vocation. He is a man of good family and independent means.
He studied theology for five years in Germany (1904 to 1907), at Strasbourg and
Heidelberg, has a library full of theological books and magazines in five languages,
and has travelled in France and Switzerland. He corresponds with friends of his
abroad, both Protestant and Catholic. He was a member of the German Student
Christian Union all the time he was in Germany, and is now an ‘Altfreund der
DCSV’. He reads Die Furche [The Furrow], Le Semeur [The Sower], Fide e Vita
[Faith and Life] regularly (all Student Movement magazines), cheerfully greeted
me by saying he knew all about me, and was just contemplating an article on
the Constantinople Conference in a Roumanian newspaper! One felt at once
in the completest sympathy with him. He is a man of deep spiritual life and
evangelical fervour, and it is glorious that he has the training of young priests
in his hands. He longs to see the Federation at work in Roumania. ‘Our young
people don’t understand that the Gospel is the basis for practical life’, he said
again and again.10
During the early twentieth century Scriban and a small but influential group
of Orthodox leaders set out to ‘rejuvenate’ the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Their efforts coincided with an increased interest in religion and spirituality
in both cities and villages.11 Miron (Ilie) Cristea became the MetropolitanPrimate of Greater Romania in December 1919. As metropolitan-primate and
then as patriarch, he reorganized the Church, placing it on a new constitutional
9
10
11
Irineu Mihălcescu, ‘Relaţiunile dintre Biserică Ortodoxă şi cea Anglicană’, Biserica Ortodoxă
Română, November 1923, 1053. On Anglican attempts at building relationships with Eastern
Orthodoxy in the early 1920s, see J. A. Douglas, ‘Prospects of Union between the Eastern and
Anglican Churches’, The Christian East 1, no. 1 (1920): 36–46; Bryn Geffert, Eastern Orthodox and
Anglicans: Diplomacy, Theology, and the Politics of Interwar Ecumenism (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 71–85; and Romanian National Archives (henceforth ANIC), Fond
Ministerul de Cultelor şi Artelor (henceforth MCA), Dosar 109/1925, ff. 91–105.
Rouse, ‘Roumania’, f. 52.
George Enache, ‘Biserică – societate – naţiune – stat în România interbelică: I. Explorări în orizont
liberal’, Revista teologică 2 (2010): 169–70.
Introduction
5
setting, expanding its jurisdiction and presiding over the establishment of new
seminaries, libraries, theological faculties, printing presses and newspapers
across the country. In the process, he fought to marginalize the Roman and
Greek Catholic Churches and oversaw a reform of the liturgical calendar that
gave rise to the Old Calendarist (Stilist) movement.
Strong regional tensions dominated 1920s Romanian Orthodoxy. Each
region approached the challenges of expansion, modernization and spiritual
renewal in different ways. The Transylvanian wing of the Church was led by
Nicolae Bălan, elected Metropolitan of Transylvania in February 1920. Almost
immediately Bălan established Lumina satelor (The Light of the Villages), a
church newspaper dedicated to spreading the Gospel in rural areas, appointing
a young priest by the name of Iosif Trifa as its editor. The newspaper soon
gave rise to a grassroots lay movement known as the Lord’s Army (Oastea
Domnului), which brought an evangelical flavour into Orthodox lay practices
and was eventually suppressed by Bălan himself. In Oltenia, Vartolomeu
Stănescu became Bishop of Râmnicul Noului Severin in March 1920. As bishop
he launched his own renewal movement, Rebirth (Renaşterea), aimed at parish
priests, and the magazine Solidaritatea (Solidarity) to bring theological ideas
into the public sphere.12 His colleagues from Moldavia, such as Gurie Grosu,
the Archbishop of Chișinău și Hotin, and Visarion Puiu, the Bishop of Hotin,
pursued similar agendas in their preaching and writing while encouraging a
specifically Moldavian approach to church governance.
In Bucharest the prolific writer and teacher Irineu Mihălcescu shaped a
generation of priests and theologians through his all-encompassing vision of
dogmatic theology.13 One of his colleagues at the University of Bucharest, the
Old Testament scholar Ioan Popescu-Mălăeşti, established a reading circle
entitled ‘Take and Read’ (Ia şi citeşte) to encourage both priests and lay people
to read Christian literature. Parish priests who had trained under Scriban,
Mihălcescu and Popescu-Mălăeşti began publishing newspapers and preaching
fiery sermons encouraging their listeners to repent and to take the spiritual life
seriously. Two of them, Teodor Popescu and Dumitru Cornilescu, drew crowds
to St Ştefan’s Church, colloquially referred to as the Stork’s Nest. Their success
attracted unwelcome attention from other reforming priests and the two men
were driven out of the Church on charges of heresy. Popescu and Cornilescu,
their colleagues decided, had gone too far and had somehow become Protestants.
12
13
Petre Sperlea, Vartolomeu Stănescu: Episcop al Râmnicului Noului Severin (1921–1938) (Bucharest:
Basilica, 2014).
Ion Vicovan, Ion Irineu Mihălcescu: ‘Apostol al teologiei româneşti’ (Iaşi: Trinitas, 2006).
6
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Protestantism has deep historical roots in Transylvania, but less elsewhere
in the country. The 1930 census listed 15.5 per cent of the population of
Transylvania as Reformed Calvinists and 7.6 per cent as Evangelical Lutherans.14
Predominately made up of ethnic Hungarians, the Reformed Church dates back
to the sixteenth century, when Calvinism spread through the region encouraged
by the Edict of Turda (1568) granting freedom of conscience and religion in
Transylvania.15 The Evangelical Lutheran Church emerged among Transylvanian
Saxons following Johannes Honterus’s publication of a 1542 edition of Martin
Luther’s writings in Braşov. It adopted the Augsburg Confession in 1572, and
remained a predominately Saxon church until 1918, when a separate Evangelical
Lutheran Church was established for non-Saxon Lutherans.16 The majority of
Transylvanian Lutherans were liberal Protestants who valued their church as
much as a bastion of Saxon culture as for its spirituality, but the incorporation
of Lutherans from Bessarabia and Dobruja after the First World War brought
Swabian Pietist currents into the church as well. Many Saxons became
disillusioned with their church during the inter-war period, just as they were
with the Romanian state. Some turned to National Socialism in the early 1930s,
much to the chagrin of church leaders who were then placed under significant
pressure to ally themselves with German Nazism, which they did by the end
of the decade.17 Neither of these ‘historical’ churches particularly worried the
Orthodox leadership so long as they remained predominantly Hungarian and
Saxon and did not try to convert ethnic Romanians.
Protestant ‘Repenter’ churches, on the other hand, encountered staunch
opposition from the Orthodox. Baptists represented the largest of the Repenter
denominations. Although they only made up 0.001 per cent of Romania’s
population in 1920, almost all Orthodox newspapers and magazines mentioned
Baptists, Repenters and sectarianism in every issue.18 Of the roughly 18 million
people living in Romania at the time of the 1930 census, 0.3 per cent were
14
15
16
17
18
Sabin Manuilă, Recensământul general al populaţiei României din decemvrie 1930, vol. 2 (Bucharest:
Institutul Central de Statistică, 1938), xxiv, xxvii.
Robert Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1977), 104–17.
Oskar Wittstock, Johannes Honterus, der Siebenbürger Humanist und Reformator: der Mann, das
Werk, die Zeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1970); Ludwig Binder, Die Kirche der
Siebenbürger Sachsen (Erlangen: Martin Luther Verlag, 1982).
Ulrich Andreas Wien, ‘Biserica Evanghelică C.A. din România începând cu anul 1918’, in Un veac
frământat. Germanii din România după 1918, ed. Ottmar Traşcă and Remus Gabriel Anghel (ClujNapoca: Institutul pentru Studierea Problemelor Minorităţilor Naţionale, 2018), 201–2, 214–16.
Direcţia Generală a Statistice, Anuarul statistic al României 1922 (Bucharest: Tipografia Curţii
Regale, 1923), 20.
Introduction
7
Baptists, 0.08 per cent were Seventh-Day Adventists and 0.04 per cent were
classified as belonging to ‘other religions and sects’.19 Fears about Repenters
dominated Orthodox discussions about the meaning and character of
Orthodoxy throughout the inter-war period. Baptist churches were established
among ethnic Germans in Bucharest and Tulcea during the 1850s and 1860s,
respectively, spreading among Saxons and Hungarians in Transylvania during
the 1870s. These communities began attracting ethnic Romanians during
the 1890s and a flourishing, albeit small, communion of Romanian Baptist
churches existed by the turn of the century.20 Nazarenes, a Protestant group
that emphasized adult baptism, pacifism and rejected oath-taking, spread in the
Banat from the 1870s onward and in Greater Romania once the Banat was split
between Romania and Serbia in 1918.21 Seventh-Day Adventist missionaries
from Poland and Germany arrived in Romania soon after the Baptists, and
scores of Adventist communities were well established by the early 1920s.22 Swiss
missionaries established the first Brethren churches (Creştini după Evanghelie)
in Bucharest in 1901. By the time of the First World War, Brethren communities
could be found in Ploieşti, Braşov, Sibiu and Bârlad. New churches sprung up
in Iaşi and the surrounding region during the war, and disillusioned Baptists in
Maramureş and Bihor formed their own independent churches along Brethren
lines.23 Pentecostal believers could be found in Moldavia from 1908 and spread
through the rest of the country during the 1920s, supported by missionaries sent
by the Romanian émigré community in Detroit.24 Bible Students, or Jehovah’s
Witnesses as they later became known, began preaching in Cluj in 1911 and
spread throughout Romania during the inter-war period.25
Despite the very real doctrinal and practical differences between Baptists,
Brethren, Nazarenes, Pentecostals, Adventists and Bible Students, all became
known as ‘Repenters’ (Pocăiţi). A pejorative term, Repenter was used to
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Manuila, Recensământul, vol. 2, xxiv.
Alexa Popovici, Istoria baptiştilor din România (Oradea: Făclia, 2007), 17–28, 279–82; Dorin
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea Cezarului. O istorie politică a evanghelicilor din România (a doua jumătate
a secolului al XIX-lea–1989)’, in Omul evanghelic: O explorare a comunităţilor protestante româneşti,
ed. Dorin Dobrincu and Dănuţ Mănăstireanu (Iaşi: Polirom, 2018), 42–64.
Aleksov, Religious Dissent, 133–64.
Iemima Ploscariu, ‘Pieties of the Nation: Romanian Neo-Protestants in the Interwar Struggle for
Religious and National Identity’ (MA diss., Central European University, Budapest, 2015), 16–17.
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea Cezarului’, 64–70; Bogdan Emanuel Răduţ, ‘Comunitatea creştinilor după
Evanghelie: 100 ani în Oltenia şi 90 ani la Craiova’, Oltenia: Studii, documente, cercetări 4, no. 2
(2014): 111.
Ciprian Bălăban, Istoria bisericii penticostale din România (1922–1989): Instituţie şi harisme (Oradea:
Editura Scriptum: 2016), 15–23.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 137/1922, f. 64.
8
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
differentiate these groups from the ‘historical’ churches by highlighting their
emphasis on repentance from sin, personal conversion, devotion to prayer
and personal Bible reading, and rigorous abstinence from things of ‘the world’
including alcohol, swearing, ostentatious displays of wealth or gluttony and sex
outside of marriage. Though they remained committed to their denominational
labels first and foremost, most Repenters in the inter-war period embraced the
term despite its negative social connotations. As uncomfortable as I am about
using a term of abuse as a category of analysis, other labels used are equally
problematic. Scholars frequently use ‘Evangelical’ as a blanket category for
Baptists, Brethren or Pentecostals, and, although this has the advantage of
accurately defining those groups on their own terms, it excludes Adventists and
Jehovah’s Witnesses for doctrinal reasons even though they were sociologically
quite similar to other Repenters and were all lumped together by Orthodox
pundits.26 Repenters are often called ‘neo-Protestants’ in contemporary
Romania to distinguish them from Reformed and Lutheran Protestants. But
this term only became popular after the Second World War and it would be
anachronistic to project it back into the inter-war period. Finally, the standard
term used by both Orthodox clergy and police was ‘Sectarians’ (sectanţi), which
implied schism, heresy and intent to destroy the Church. Anyone who was not
a member of one of the ‘historical’ churches was a sectarian in the eyes of the
state, but I avoid the word here because of its strong pejorative connotations.27
The actual number of Repenter churches was small relative to the size of
the population, but Orthodox commentators spoke constantly about their
sudden appearance and apparent success, making their impact on Orthodox
Christianity disproportionate to their numbers. Opposition to Repenters took
different forms from one region to another. In Transylvania, groups like the
Lord’s Army argued explicitly that they were needed to blunt the appeal of
Repenters, while Church leaders in Crişana and Bessarabia appointed ‘antisectarian missionaries’ to fight Repenters at a village level. Regional differences
sometimes mirrored the actual strength of Repenter movements – Repenter
communities were more common in Crişana and Bessarabia than elsewhere
in the country, for example – but also reflected the resources and agendas of
Orthodox leaders in those areas.
26
27
Paul E. Michelson, ‘The History of Romanian Evangelicals 1918–1989: A Bibliographical Excursus’,
Arhiva Moladviae 9 (2017): 191–234.
Lucian Ionel Mercea, ‘The Concept of Sect in the Interwar Period’, in The Holistic Society: MultiDisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Ioan-Gheorghe Rotaru and Denise Elaine Burrill (Beltsville, MD:
Scientia Moralitas Research Institute, 2017), 192–205.
Introduction
9
The institutional reforms of Cristea, Bălan, Stănescu and their colleagues
are well documented, as is their militant nationalism, antisemitism and their
associations with fascist and right-wing movements such as the National
Christian Defense League (Liga Apărării Naţional Creştine, LANC) and the
Legion of the Archangel Michael (Legiunea Arhanghelului Mihail).28 A growing
literature has also emerged in recent years on the history of evangelical groups
such as the Baptists, Brethren and Pentecostals. Evangelical historians frequently
demonize the Orthodox Church because of its role in suppressing their
churches. This book brings histories of Romanian Orthodoxy into conversation
with histories of Repenter Christianity, showing how both stories were catalysed
by rising literacy rates, new religious practices, new ways of engaging with
Scripture, a newly empowered laity inspired by universal male suffrage, a
growing civil society that was taking control of community organizing and the
sudden expansion of the Romanian nation-state.
Most histories of both Orthodox and Repenter churches focus primarily on
the legal and institutional changes that shaped them as organizations. Although
I too discuss these questions, this book draws on the sermons, pamphlets,
newspapers and magazines they left behind to reveal that behind the mutual
hostility and competition lay different approaches to reading the Bible and
different ways of developing doctrine. Juxtaposing the thought-worlds of
educated Orthodox bishops and self-taught Repenter preachers shows how
Christians practised their faith in different social contexts, and gives us a clue
to how and why movements like the Lord’s Army and the Stork’s Nest evolved
out of solidly Orthodox settings into communities that looked remarkably like
the Repenter movements they had set out to oppose. The picture that emerges
is of 1920s Romania as a dynamic and polyphonic religious sphere. Behind
the ‘us against them’ rhetoric lay a collection of diverse religious communities
responding to rapid social change in different ways.
The Romanian story has parallels in other Orthodox countries, most
notably in late imperial Russia and the Serbian regions of Austria-Hungary.
Sergei Zhuk has described the clash between Repenters (he calls them ‘peasant
evangelicals’) and Orthodox Christians as a ‘culture war’. ‘The paradox of this
28
Hans-Christian Maner, Multikonfessionalität und neue Staatlichkeit: Orthodoxe, griechischkatholische und römisch-katholische Kirche in Siebenbürgen und Altrumänien zwischen den
Weltkriegen (1918–1940) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008); Florian Kührer-Wielach,
Siebenbürgen ohne Siebenbürger?: Zentralstaatliche Integration und politischer Regionalismus nach
dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014).
10
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
confrontation’, he writes, ‘was that the roots of the peasants’ radical religion
were in popular Orthodoxy itself. To some extent, the peasant evangelicals
tried to be more rigorous and pious Orthodox believers than their less religious
and more cynical neighbors. They constructed their religion by appropriating
the available and well-known elements of Orthodoxy’.29 Rather than one
borrowing from the other, other historians have suggested that both Repenter
and Orthodox groups were responding to a complex nexus of historical
changes. Heather Coleman emphasizes that the rise of Repenter Christianity
was a symptom as well as a cause of a broad sea change in how previously
marginalized people engaged with civil society and the state. ‘Contemporary
observers from all across the political spectrum’, she says, ‘regarded the Baptists’
presence and activities as emblematic of the penetration of Western ideas
beyond the educated elite, the challenge of the emergence of a culture outside
the boundaries of the society promoted by the state and its church, and the
increasingly articulate demands of lower-class people for a voice and a role in
shaping that culture’.30 The unique historical context that catalysed the spread
of the Baptists also impacted the Orthodox Church, which is why combating
Protestantism was as much about negotiating the limits of Orthodoxy as it
was about stopping ‘foreign influences’ spreading through the country. As Vera
Shevzov has argued, when the Orthodox spoke about other Christians they
did so in an attempt to clarify tensions within their own church.31 Moreover,
the process of limiting Repenter evangelism involved ‘radical innovations’
such as appointing anti-Sectarian missionaries, as well as bringing some
characteristically Protestant spiritual practices into the Orthodox Church.32
Whereas most historians of Russian religion have focused on the Orthodox
versus Repenter struggle, the reform movements of 1920s Romania such as
the Lord’s Army and the Stork’s Nest provide an opportunity to see the same
social tensions that threw the Orthodox Church into conflict with Repenters
at work inside the Orthodox Church itself. Such movements are examples of
what James Kapaló calls ‘liminal Orthodoxy’ – forms of Orthodox Christianity
29
30
31
32
Sergei I. Zhuk, Russia’s Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millenialism, and Radical Sects in Southern
Russia and Ukraine, 1830–1917 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004), 3.
Heather J. Coleman, Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 1905–1929 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2005), 3.
Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 14.
J. Eugene Clay, ‘Orthodox Missionaries and “Orthodox Heretics” in Russia, 1886–1917’, in Of
Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, ed. Robert P. Geraci and
Michael Khodarkovsky (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 40.
Introduction
11
suspended between Orthodoxy and other religious traditions; bitterly critical
of the established Church while still tenaciously clinging to it.33
The leaders of both of the Lord’s Army and the Stork’s Nest were eventually
driven out of their ministries by the ROC hierarchy, and their fate reflects a
deep mistrust of innovation as well as shedding light on the development of
Orthodoxy in the twentieth century. Orthodoxy teaches that the full truth
was revealed in Jesus Christ and that the fundamental structures of church
organization were created by the Apostles, but that the truth also resides in the
whole Church as the body of Christ, including all believers, living and dead.
Tradition, or parádosis in Greek, is encapsulated in the actions and teachings
of the Church in the past and the present. It acts as a guide for believers.34 In
his 1922 Manual for Biblical Hermeneutics, Iuliu Scriban explained that ‘the
Church has the duty to use the entire store of faith and piety produced by
Christians hearts, and to preserve it for the future. We therefore need to listen
to the Church when it comes to explaining or to guiding our faith and piety.’35
Antonie Plămădeală, who served as Metropolitan of Ardeal between 1982 and
2005, writes that Tradition ‘has a certain elasticity’ and must be ‘constantly
adapted to the environment, mentality, and culture of the times, and even to
each individual, with a great deal of consideration and generosity’.36 It is the
prerogative of one’s spiritual elder to interpret Tradition, however, whether they
be a priest, an abbot, a bishop or a patriarch. One cannot simply decide for
oneself how to apply Tradition to one’s own circumstances.
The fear that well-meaning reformers may have gone beyond Tradition
has resulted in a deep-seated wariness of renewal movements within Eastern
Orthodoxy. In Russia, the Holy Synod initially forbade the Grand Duchess
Elizabeth Feodorovna’s attempt to establish a semi-monastic community
known as the Martha and Mary House of Mercy in 1909. They were concerned
about the fact that the sisters’ vows were only for set periods, that they were
known as deaconesses, their uniforms, the fact that they ate meat and that the
women could work outside of the community. Feodorovna was only able to put
33
34
35
36
James A. Kapaló, Inochentism and Orthodox Christianity: Religious Dissent in the Russian and
Romanian Borderlands (London: Routledge, 2019), x.
John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes, 2nd edn (New York:
Fordham University Press, 1983), 8–11; Theodore G. Stylianopoulos, ‘Scripture and Tradition in the
Church’, in The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, ed. Mary B. Cunningham
and Elizabeth Theokritoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 21–34.
Iuliu Scriban, Manual de ermeneutică biblică pentru învăţătura clasei VII a seminariilor teologice.
2nd edn (Bucharest: Editura Cassei Şcoalelor, 1922), 109.
Antonie Plămădeală, Tradiţie şi libertate în spiritualitatea ortodoxă (Bucharest: Sophia, 2010),
59–60.
12
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
her movement on its feet thanks to the direct intervention of the tsar.37 At the
same time that Feodorovna was wrestling with the Holy Synod, the Russian
Orthodox Church was taking steps to suppress the Teetotaller (trezvenniki)
movement led by a lay preacher known as ‘Brother Ioann’ Churikov. Page
Herrlinger writes that, in addition to condemning alcohol, Brother Ioann taught
‘the importance of actively embracing Scripture, living a clean lifestyle (free
from swearing, drinking, stealing, and causing physical harm to others), and
committing oneself to the pursuit of honest labour’.38 His detractors complained
that the joy his followers found after repenting of their sins was ‘un-Orthodox’,
that healthy living was too ‘mundane’ a goal for Christian spirituality and that
Teetotallers revered Brother Ioann while being openly critical of the Orthodox
Church. Conflicts such as these show how quickly tensions could develop when
individuals or groups developed new spiritual practices independent of those
who had the institutional authority to interpret Tradition.
In Serbia, a movement known as the God Worshippers emerged at the end of
the nineteenth century. In the words of one priest in 1922,
They said they wanted to improve and be better, to go along the right path, as
they could not watch and listen to the disorder and talking in church. They
wanted to improve themselves in terms of order and devotion, to wash away
sins, to move in the right direction, to stand still in the church and to listen to
God’s service with understanding, and to serve others as a beautiful example and
become like their ancestors, once true and devout Christians.39
Despised by other Orthodox Christians, treated with suspicion by the police and
persecuted when they joined the military, God Worshippers were nonetheless
not cast out of the Church. Instead, Patriarch Dimitrije attempted to bring them
under church control and advised his priests to ‘refrain from throwing stones at
them because you could hit Christ’.40
In Greece, the Holy Synod investigated the parachurch organization Zoe
for heresy twice, in 1914 and 1923, only to acquit it both times. The origins of
37
38
39
40
Paul Ladouceur, ‘“In My Father’s House There are Many Mansions” (Jn 14:2): New Institutions in
Modern Orthodox Spirituality’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 55, no. 4 (2011): 447–56.
Page Herrlinger, ‘Orthodoxy and the Politics of Emotion in the Case of “Brother Ioann” Churikov
and His Followers, 1910–1914’, in Orthodox Paradoxes: Heterogeneities and Complexities in
Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy, ed. Katya Tolstaya (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 196.
Quoted in Radmila Radić and Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović, ‘The God Worshipper Movement in
Serbian Society in the Twentieth Century: Emergence, Development, and Structures’, in Orthodox
Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe, ed. Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović and Radmila
Radić (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 138–9.
Quoted in ibid., 146.
Introduction
13
Zoe lay in a community established by Apostolos Makrakis in 1876, which ran
Sunday schools for children, philosophical lectures and sermons for adults and
published its own magazine, Logos. The ‘Logos School’ was closed down by the
Greek government in 1878 after Makrakis attacked the Holy Synod for failing
to defrock and excommunicate bishops who had obtained their offices through
bribery; a practice known as simony. In 1907 one of Makrakis’s collaborators,
the Archimandrite Eusebios Matthopoulos, created Zoe. Matthopoulos and his
followers took vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, but not as monks, and
carried out an extensive programme of preaching aimed at educating lay people
about Orthodoxy. The first issue of their newspaper declared that ‘with the help
of divine grace, our goal is to contribute to the revival of religious feeling and to
bring people back to the original form of the Christian life’.41 The organization
expanded dramatically after 1927, when Archimandrite Seraphim Papakostas
took over as leader and began opening hundreds of catechetical schools for
young people across the country. Under his leadership Zoe formed specific
branches dedicated specifically to students, women, scientists, workers, teachers
and nurses. Despite, or perhaps because of, its popular success, the Church’s
hierarchy remained aloof and hesitant of embracing an organization that they
did not have direct control over.42
The one exception to ecclesiastical mistrust of parachurch organizations
during this period occurred in Bulgaria, where the Holy Synod established the
White Cross fraternity in 1923, followed by the Union of the Christian Orthodox
Fraternities a year later. The Christiyanka magazine provided a mouthpiece for
both women’s movements, which flourished during the 1920s and then came to an
end with the rise of the Bulgarian Communist Party after the Second World War.
The White Cross defined its goal as being ‘to support the mission of the people’s
Orthodox Church by contributing to and developing the expression of Christian
mercy and religious and moral education through the service of its sisters’.43
Christiyanka elaborated on the role of these groups, stating that its members
41
42
43
Quoted in Pandora Dimanopoulou, ‘L’oeuvre de la propagation de la foi et de la morale chrétienne
dans la société grecque: L’action de la Confrérie Zôè en Grèce, 1907–1938’, Revue d’Histoire
Ecclésiastique 105, no. 1 (2010): 121–46.
Ibid., 121–46; Ladouceur, ‘In My Father’s House’, 441–7; Christos Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the
West (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006), 217–350; Amaryllis Logotheti, ‘The
Brotherhood of Theologians: Zoe and Its Influence on Twentieth-Century Greece’, in Orthodox
Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe, ed. Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović and Radmila
Radić (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 285–302.
Galina Goncharova, ‘The Bulgarian Orthodox Charity Network and the Movement for Practical
Christianity After World War I’, in Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe, ed.
Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović and Radmila Radić (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 309–10.
14
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
‘should be bearers of its ideas, workers of the White Cross, missionaries for the
restoration of harmony between faith and life, Samaritans relieving the sadness
and pain of neighbours … builders of a living vigorous Christianity, deaconesses
in the renovated and regenerated native church’.44 Newspapers and magazines
played a central role in almost all of the early twentieth-century Orthodox
renewal movements. Most also emerged out of complaints that the Church was
not doing its job properly, was not sufficiently ‘alive’, and the conviction that
the solution lay in dedicated, voluntary social engagement outside of existing
church structures, whether that be through preaching, charity or education.
Western Christianity – especially Anglicanism – frequently served as the
standard by which reformers and leaders of parachurch movements judged
Orthodoxy. As George Demacopoloulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou point out,
during the twentieth century the concept of the West ‘functioned as an absolute
marker of difference from what is considered to be the essence of Orthodoxy, and,
thus, ironically, has become a constitutive aspect of the modern Orthodox self ’.45
The logical starting point for grasping twentieth-century Orthodoxy, therefore,
is to examine how it engaged with Protestantism and renewal movements on its
own soil. Doing so promises to facilitate a more authentic encounter of I and
Thou, as well as helping generate more fruitful reflection on where the limits of
Orthodoxy really lie. A historical approach, moreover, avoids beginning with
an interrogation of whether the Other is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Instead, it
observes how the various strands of Christianity became entangled with one
another in a time of complex social change.
Part One explores the historical context of the 1920s in which new ecclesial
structures, Repenter Chrisitanities, and liminal Orthodoxies developed. Chapter
1 traces changes in preaching and catechal practices at grassroots levels, showing
what lived religion looked like in Romanian villages and flagging the quiet sea
changes produced by attempts to explain the Church’s teachings to its followers.
Turning to the cities, Chapter 2 looks at the influence of Western Christianities
on renewal movements such as Vartolomeu Stănescu’s Social Christianity and
the Christian student movement associated with the YMCA. The stakes were
more obvious and Western influences more explicit in places like Bucharest. Here
Church leaders were quick to intervene whenever they believed that something
was amiss. Chapter 3 unpacks the regional tensions produced by the unification
44
45
Ibid., 309.
George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, ‘Orthodox Naming of the Other: A
Postcolonial Approach’, in Orthodox Constructions of the West, ed. George E. Demacopoulos and
Aristotle Papanikolaou (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 2.
Introduction
15
of separate Orthodox Churches into a single Romanian Orthodox Church. Those
regions that came under the authority of the Romanian patriarchate during the
1920s had been ruled by different empires, nation-states and church bodies in
the years before the First World War. Each approached the new church with
its own ambitions and past experiences, making the process of church-building
one that was fraught with difficulties. Dissatisfaction with the new patriarchate
becomes apparent in Chapter 4, which focuses on two liminal movements in
Moldavia and Bessarabia: Inochentism and Old Calendarism. The appearance,
character and fates of these movements shows how disaffected many Orthodox
believers were with the state of their church and the decisions being made by
their leaders. Both movements were harshly suppressed by the Church and the
state, a campaign which revealed how deeply intertwined the interests of the
Church and the nation-state actually were.
Part Two focuses on Romanian Orthodoxy’s relationship with its Others.
Chapter 5 looks at Orthodox hostility towards Roman and Greek Catholics
during the 1920s. Focusing specifically on the Concordat of 1927, it reveals the
political and economic stakes in this conflict and the impact that the conflict
had on the character of Orthodoxy. Chapter 6 discusses the major Repenter
denominations – Baptists, Brethren, Nazarenes, Pentecostals, Seventh-Day
Adventists and Bible Students, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. It explores their origins
inside and outside Romania, as well as showing how both believers and critics
understood their beliefs and practices. Chapter 7 focuses on the fiercest
opponents of Repenter Christianity, anti-Sectarian missionaries. Through a
close reading of missionary books and pamphlets, it discusses how missionaries
cultivated a modern, rigorous and clearly articulated approach to Orthodoxy in
their attempts to combat Repenters.
Finally, Part Three explores two parachurch movements: the Lord’s Army
in Transylvania and the Stork’s Nest in Bucharest. As exemplars of liminal
Orthodoxy, the doctrinal and practical disagreements that dominated these
movements’ histories shed light on what had actually changed in the religious
landscape of 1920s Romania and why Orthodox leaders opposed it so bitterly.
Renewed lay interest in holy living, new approaches to the Bible, regional power
struggles, dissatisfaction with the institutional Church, fears about Repenters
and Western influences all lay at the heart of the conflicts over the Lord’s
Army and the Stork’s Nest. How these conflicts were resolved and what their
consequences were for the future of Romanian Christianity are questions that
this book seeks to shed some light on.
16
1
Romanian Orthodox Christianity
Romania was a predominantly rural country during the inter-war period.
Peasants both made up the majority of the population and personified the
Romanian national ideal for secular and church intellectuals. Engaging with
peasant beliefs and practices thus became a priority for ethnographers and
church leaders in the early twentieth century. In a book on The Culture of our
Villages, Bishop Grigorie Comşa reflected a confident belief that Orthodoxy was
inextricably bound up with a pure and unchanging rural existence. He wrote:
The belief that there is a God who directs the world is rooted deep in the soul
of our peasant, and nothing can take this belief away from him. For centuries
the peasant has been used to his Christian church being at the centre of his life.
The village church was the fountain of goodness from which the whole village
drank. The church was the embodiment of faith, and in the church the peasant
felt that he was in the house of God. Everything changed and passed away in
time, but the church remained. And here in the church the peasants gathered,
calling to the Saviour just as the Apostles did: ‘Lord, have mercy for we are
perishing’.
It is well known that for many ages reading and writing have been taught
in the modest Romanian schools next to monasteries and churches. Children
took turns reading from the Psalms, the Horologion,1 the Octoechos,2 and the
Apostol.3 The Gospel was thoughtfully listened to. The contents of the holy
books became cultural artefacts in the soul of the people. And thus our people
in the villages placed the fear of God above the fear of evil. Our people fears
God’s punishment more than the laws of men. For centuries, this fear of God has
preserved out people’s proverbial nobility and goodness.4
1
2
3
4
The Book of Hours.
A liturgical book.
A collection of readings from the New Testament.
Grigorie Gh. Comşa, Cultura satelor noastre (Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei Diecezane, 1935), 80–1.
20
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Romanian peasants apparently knew God intuitively, and if they lived sinful lives
it was because of Western modernity, with its many temptations and impious
ideas.5 But ethnographic fieldwork conducted by students in inter-war Romania
suggested that even if they loved the church, not everyone knew a great deal
about theology. Elderly peasants interviewed by students from their own villages
demonstrated a remarkable ignorance about even apparently well-known Bible
stories. When asked how the world was created, for example, Anca Fieraru, a
68-year-old woman from Pieleşti in Dolj county, recalled that
The land was created by God following the water. In the beginning there was
only water everywhere, and the land was under the water. To build it he had to
push the water back; a very difficult task. To see how much the water went down
each time, God sent out different animals which, finding various objects, did
not return. Then God sent out a hedgehog which [was the] only [animal who]
brought back an answer. As a reward God gave it spikes so that no-one would
eat it and so that it too could have a holiday, which is on Tuesday, when you
shouldn’t begin something new.6
Other sociologists and ethnographers of the early twentieth century recorded
similar accounts. Few of them combined as many discordant elements as Fieraru’s
version of creation but all surprised their collectors by how significantly they
diverged from the cosmologies of the educated elites.7 Inter-war ethnographers
sought out the most elderly informants and recorded only the most remarkable
beliefs they could find, but their reports should nonetheless have raised concerns
about how orthodox most of the population was.
Young people had more chances to learn what the Church wanted them to
thanks to the expanding school system. School textbooks from before the First
World War presented fables such as ‘the boy who cried wolf ’ alongside Bible
stories and lessons for students to memorize on topics such as ‘who should
perform a baptism?’, ‘what should godparents be like?’ and ‘what should
Christians do before receiving the Eucharist?’.8 They used a question and
5
6
7
8
Irineu Mihălcescu, Cauzele necredinţei contimporane şi mijloacele de a-o combate (Bucharest:
Tipografia cărţilor bisericeşti, 1915).
‘Folklor in Dolj’ (unpublished MS, Biblioteca Centrală Universitară – Litere), A60.238.
G. F. Ciauşanu, G. Fira and C. M. Popescu, Culegere de folclor din jud. Vâlcea şi împrejurimi
(Bucharest: Cultură Naţională, 1928); Aurel Cosma, Cosmogonia poporului român (Bucharest:
Tipografia Ziarului Universul, 1942); Ion I. Ionică, Drăguş: Un sat din ţara Oltului (Făgăraş)
(Bucharest: Institutul de Ştiinţe Sociale al României, 1944); Ion Cherciu, Spiritualitate tradiţională
românească în epoca interbelică (Bucharest: Muzeul Naţional al Satului ‘Dimitrie Gusti’, 2010).
Al. Popescu-Cernica, Catechismul religiunei creştine ortodoxe conform cu programa analitică în us şi
ĭnsoţit de povestirĭ şi istorióre morale şi evangelice pentru usul clasei IV urbană şi V rurală (Bucharest:
Lito-Tipografia Motzatzeanu şi Lambru, 1896).
Romanian Orthodox Christianity
21
answer format, often supporting each lesson with a Bible verse. Moise Toma’s
catechism, for example, taught:
How can one gain a good reputation?
Someone earns a good reputation with good behaviour and good deeds. Solomon
the wise spoke about a good reputation: ‘A good name is to be chosen rather than
great riches and favour is better than silver or gold.’ (Proverbs 22:1)
How should we seek happiness?
We should look for happiness in spiritual riches and pleasures and in good
deeds. The Saviour says: ‘Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey
it!’ (Luke 11:28).9
By the inter-war period lessons for primary school students were bookended
by prayers when entering or leaving the classroom, and textbooks were
illustrated with icons and snippets of poetry. Students were told Bible stories
in simple language, then had their significance explained in more detail.10 The
curriculum for secondary schools stated that, during their two hours of religious
education per week, in their first year students should learn basic Old Testament
stories such as the creation of the world, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the
kings David and Solomon and the Babylonian captivity. In the second year
they studied Jesus’s life and parables as presented in the gospels. They learned
about Orthodox liturgy in the third year, including the history of the liturgy,
ritual books, priestly garments, church music and the liturgical calendar. The
fourth year was dedicated to theological concepts such as the existence of God,
the Trinity, life after death, the Virgin Mary and sacraments such as baptisms
or weddings. Church history occupied the fifth and sixth years, dogmatics the
seventh year and Christian morality the eighth.11
Teachers struggled with how to transfer these lessons into everyday life. It
was at moments of loss such as funerals, they said, or when priests were able to
practice the faith together with students, that effective education happened.12 As
the future patriarch Nicodim Munteanu argued, once Christians learned what
to believe they had to change the way they lived. His advice was ‘to love the Lord
your God with all your soul and all your thoughts, desires, and actions, living
9
10
11
12
Moise Toma, Catehism pentru învăţământul religiunei dreptcredincioase-răsăritene în şcoalele
primare (Nagyszeben: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidecezane, 1912), 10.
Irineu Mihălcescu and Petru Barbu, Carte de religie pentru clasa III-a primară (n.p.: Editura
Librăriei Pavel Suru, n.d.); Aristide C. Cucu, Carte de religie pentru clasa IV-a primară (n.p.: Editura
Autorului, 1938).
ANIC, Fond Ministerul Instrucţiunii, Fond 310/1923, ff. 238–42.
Dumitru Călugăr, ‘Treptele formale şi învăţământul religios’, Revista teologică 28, no. 4 (April 1938):
140–9.
22
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
in a way that pleases him’.13 Munteanu suggested believers try to remember
that everything they had came from God, that God saw all their thoughts and
actions, that God sends both blessings and trials to help them grow, and that they
must remain submitted to the Church in all things. Practices he recommended
included frequent prayer, regular confession, Bible reading, disciplining one’s
thoughts and avoiding luxury or lethargy.
School was not the only, or even the most important, place that people learned
about religion. As the anthropologist Vlad Naumescu notes, most believers
experience Eastern Orthodoxy first and foremost as ‘ritual participation …
through authorized practice and collective worship’. One ‘masters’ Orthodoxy
by growing into the faith from childhood, and taking part in the sacraments
over a long period of time has a transformative impact on the self.14 Naumescu
sees this as an organic process that takes place within the family and is guided by
the parish priest. In this vein, the majority of early twentieth-century catechisms
focused on very practical issues such as how to visit a monastery and what to do
when one goes to church.15
One of the most accessible of these books was a dialogue written by the priest
and teacher Ştefan Călinescu in 1904. The hero is Moş Dragne, a wise peasant
over a hundred years old who constantly asks his priests and cantors to explain
his religion to him. Over the course of the book Moş Dragne learns that every
aspect of Orthodox practice is significant. ‘Why do all churches face east?’ asks
Moş Dragne. ‘Churches are built that way so that we will look east, towards the
place where Jesus Christ was born’, his priest answers. ‘Towards the light, just as
the grass does when it bends towards the rising sun.’16 ‘Why does the cloth on
the altar look like it does?’ asks Moş Dragne. ‘The shine of the cloth reflects the
shining throne of Jesus Christ in heaven’, his priest replies. ‘Everything is covered,
even the leg, so that no one who is not ordained touches it. For not only the holy
relics and incenses are placed there, but so is the great and holy myrrh which noone should touch unless they are being anointed with it.’17 ‘Truly the mysteries of
13
14
15
16
17
Nicodim Munteanu, Ce să crezi şi cum să trăeşti? Adică schema credinţei şi moralei creştine (Bucharest:
Albert Baer, 1905), 17.
Vlad Naumescu, ‘Becoming Orthodox: The Mystery and Mastery of a Christian Tradition’, in Praying
with the Senses: Contemporary Orthodox Christian Spirituality in Practice, ed. Sonja Luehrmann
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018), 31–2.
Ioan Mihălcescu, Explicarea Sfintei Liturghii (Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice Carol Göbl,
1917); Damian Stănoiu, Cum se vizitează o mănăstire (Bucharest: Tipografiile Convorbiri Literare,
1923); Al. Săndulescu, Mergerea la biserică (Buzău: Tipografia M. Mracek, 1941); Florea Codreanu,
Cunoştiinţe liturgice (Arad: Editura Diecezană, 1945).
Ştefan Călinescu, Dialog între Moş Dragne şi Logofătul Stoĭca Călinénu explicând întregul organism
liturgic (Bucharest: Tipografia Gutenberg, 1904), 11.
Ibid., 15.
Romanian Orthodox Christianity
23
God are great and wonderful!’ exclaims Moş Dragne once everything has been
explained. ‘May God teach these divine truths to everyone; that every soul might
lift itself up towards divine things and understand the power of God and the gift
of the anointed [priests].’18
Symbolism is particularly strong in Orthodox worship. Trying to explain
‘mysticism in the Eastern Church’ to Western readers, the Serbian theologian
Nikolaj Velimirović commented that everything in the natural world can
be a symbol or a sign of spiritual realities. In the words of Symeon the New
Theologian, ‘the man who is enlightened by the Holy Spirit … contemplates
spiritually visible things and bodies as the symbols of the things invisible’.19 Thus
someone who washes themselves in baptism ‘becomes clean, just like they had
been born again’, and a chandelier (policandrul) hanging in the centre of the
church directly under an icon of Jesus holding everything in his hands (the
Pantocrator icon) can symbolize the fact that God cares for and sustains all light
in the world.20
Icons adorn every Orthodox church in the world and are ‘a way of exteriorizing
an external feeling’.21 Apologists for icons argued that they have existed since
the time of Christ, citing the tradition that a woman wiped Jesus’s face on his
way to be crucified, leaving an image of his face on the cloth. Icons portray
stories from the Bible as well as moments from the lives of saints, who mediate
between believers and God just as one might ask a holy person to pray for them.
Particularly important churches also housed the relics of saints, which were
venerated in the same way as icons. These were primarily medieval Romanian
saints associated with particular cities such as Parascheva of Iaşi, Filofteia of
Argeș, John the New of Suceava and Dimitrie the New (Basarabov), the patron
saint of Bucharest.22
Protestants claimed that Orthodox Christians worshipped icons as idols, but
Orthodox writers reminded them that there is a significant difference between
‘worship’ – which is due to God alone – and ‘veneration’ – which should be given
to icons and holy people. Moreover, they insisted, ‘when we venerate and bow
to the icons we are not bowing before the paint or the wood, but to the saints
18
19
20
21
22
Ibid., 145.
Quoted in Nicholai D. Velimirovich, The Universe as Symbols and Signs: As Essay on Mysticism in the
Eastern Church (Libertyville, IL: St Sava Monastery, 1950), 2.
Călinescu, Dialog între Moş Dragne, 20, 26. See also Laurenţiu Streza, ‘Liturgical Space’, in Orthodox
Theology in the 20th Century and Early 21st Century: A Romanian Orthodox Perspective, ed. Viorel
Ioniţă (Bucharest: Basilica, 2013), 591–603.
Const P. Beldie, Cultul sfintelor icoane (Bârlad: Tipografia N. Chiriac, 1937), 3.
Ioanichie Bălan, Sfintele moaşte din România (Roman: Editura Episcopiei Romanului, 1999), 5–6.
24
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
who are portrayed in the icons’.23 The veneration of icons followed a particular
pattern which constituted polite behaviour in church. The priest Alexandru
Săndulescu explained that
One bows twice, kisses the icon, bows a third time, then moves on. The believer
goes first to the icon of the Saviour, then to the icon of the Mother of God, to
the icon on the left of the Saviour, to the icon on the right of the Mother of God,
to the icon on the iconostasis and then goes to their place. If the Holy Gospel
has been placed on the tetrapod in the middle of the church, the believer kisses
the Holy Gospel after they have kissed the icon on the iconostasis then goes to
their place.24
Antonie Luţcan reflected that by ‘viewing the face of the saint we are praying
to, even our physical eyes take part in the prayer, making it, in the words of
Scripture, “face to face” (Exodus 33:11)’.25
The Bible also plays an important role in Orthodox worship. The Gospel is
placed at the centre of the room during church services, sections of the Bible are
read out loud as part of the liturgy, Biblical scenes are represented on icons and
the prayers incorporate many Bible verses and references. But the idea that lay
believers would read the Bible for themselves was a relatively new one as rising
literacy rates prompted a growing desire for Bible reading across the country.26
Priests taught that explaining Scripture puts believers ‘in connection with the
divine spirit itself ’ and encouraged lay Bible reading because ‘God revealed his
teachings and his holy will to all people, regardless of nation, sex, social standing,
or age’.27 At the same time, however, they warned that interpreting the Bible is not
easy. Iuliu Scriban wrote that only someone with adequate moral and intellectual
abilities and training was able to properly understand the Bible. Even then, it
could not be done by an individual but only in accordance with the teachings
of the whole church.28 Biblical interpretation, insisted inter-war textbooks, was
a scientific endeavour that required a deep knowledge of historical context,
archaeology, philology and spiritual insight.29
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
Ibid., 12.
Săndulescu, Mergerea la biserică, 10.
Antonie Luţcan, Cuvinte de îndrumare (Jud. Soroca: Editura Monăstirei Dobruşa, 1926), 16.
Vasile Vasilache, Biblia în ortodoxie (Neamţ: Tipografia Sfintei Mănăstiri Neamţu, 1939), 6–11.
Ibid., 95, 115.
Scriban, Manual de ermeneutică biblică, 18–22, 151–3.
Ibid.; Iustin Suciu, Ermeneutica biblică sau ştiinţa interpretării Sfintei Scripturi (Arad: Editura
Autorului, 1933).
Romanian Orthodox Christianity
25
Worship was and is a particularly sensory experience in Eastern Orthodoxy.
Antonie Luţcan wrote that ‘seeing the holy icons, illuminated by candles,
the candlesticks full of light, the ceiling of the church reflecting the vault of
the heavens, we are easily overcome by the humble thought that God is near
and easily our lips mouth the words of the prayer’.30 In addition to the visual
stimulation of the icon, the aroma of incense and the physical sensations of
crossing oneself and of standing still for long periods of time, choral singing
became common at large religious gatherings from the late nineteenth century
onwards, combining polyphonic Western harmonies with traditional Orthodox
chant.31 Musicians such as Gavril Muzicescu, Nicolae Lungu and Ioan Chirescu
created new harmonies that brought religious music back to the attention of the
Romanian public.32 In the preface to a songbook assembled by the director of
the patriarchal choir, Eugen Bărbulescu wrote that ‘when it rises in the careful
harmony of talented voices, religious music transforms the entire prayer time,
joining it with the supreme being, to whom you give yourself completely’.33
Prayer in Eastern Orthodoxy can be chanted or recited, out loud or silent.
Believers are encouraged to pray in their own words but most make use of prayer
books. Books with prayers to be prayed together during worship services usually
contained musical notation alongside the words. Like corporate singing, praying
together allowed believers to express particularly strong emotions, knowing that
their feelings were echoed by others. Quoting Teophan the Monk, for example,
Bishop Andrei Magieru pointed out that ‘the Paraklesis of the Mother of the
God is a call for help to the Virgin Mary “which is sung with complete disgust
at oneself and at times of need”’.34 Repentance and contrition feature heavily in
Orthodox prayers. Most of the prayers collected by the monk Nicodim in 1799
and used throughout Romania contrasted the absolute holiness of God – ‘He who
is unknowable in being, incomprehensible in greatness, and whose goodness
is immeasurable; the deep and untold fount of power and wisdom’ – with the
abject sinfulness of man, who is ‘not worthy to speak, for I am very sinful’.35 This
30
31
32
33
34
35
Luţcan, Cuvinte de îndrumare, 9.
Stelian Ionaşcu, ‘Chanting in the Romanian Orthodox Church in a Pan-Orthodox Context’, in
Orthodox Theology in the 20th Century and Early 21st Century: A Romanian Orthodox Perspective,
ed. Viorel Ioniţă (Bucharest: Basilica, 2013), 859–67.
Jim Samson, Music in the Balkans (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 150.
Eugen Bărbulescu, ‘Prefaţă’, in Zece cântece religioase, ed. G. Cucu (Bucharest: Editura Proprie,
1928), 3.
Andrei Magieru, Acatistul Domnului nostru Iisus Hristos şi Paraclisul Preasfintei Născătoarei de
Dumnezeu (Arad: Diecezana, 1940), 3.
Rugăciunile Sfinţilor Părinţi sau Apanthisma (Bucharest: Cartea Orthodoxă, 2007), 129–30.
26
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
contrast allowed believers to reflect on the amazing mercy that God shows by
not destroying them but instead giving them salvation and eternal life.
It was the parish priest who mediated God’s mercies to believers, and his role
expanded significantly during the early twentieth century. In the mid-nineteenth
century priests were expected to do four things: (i) to teach the people; (ii) to live
holy lives; (iii) to administer the sacraments; and (iv) to pray for the people.36 As
the population increased and levels of education rose, the expectations placed
on priests rose with them. Ştefan Călinescu reflected in 1908 that ‘things which
were tolerated and passed over in the past can no longer be tolerated today.
Everything is changing in the world, and we change with it’.37 In addition to
administering the sacraments and running church services, Călinescu said that
The priest should actively direct all activity for the better. He should encourage
the inhabitants of rural areas to build good, healthy houses, to manage their
businesses well so that their lives might be made easier and they might preserve
their energy for things that must be done. He must be a guide in economic
matters so that no one lacks anything or is forced to rely on the charity of others.
He should instruct people to send their children to school so that foreigners
no longer think of us as a country of blind people. He should be a devoted
supporter of the popular banks so that the people might escape from usurers
who wring out even the marrow from the bones of those who are suffering.
He should set a wise example in improving the cultivation of the soil so that
everyone’s productivity might increase.38
Priests argued that they played an irreplaceable role in ensuring social progress.
They called for people to support their efforts because, working together with
parents and teachers, they were the ones responsible for guiding the next
generation to maturity.39
The number of monks and nuns, on the other hand, decreased significantly
during the second half of the nineteenth century in part because the secularization
of monastic estates deprived them of important financial resources.40 The
spiritual life of the monasteries also suffered to the extent that Epicaria Moiescu
complained that ‘today’s monasteries do not reflect their calling in any way’.41
36
37
38
39
40
41
Datoriile preoţilor, trans. C. Mavrula [1852] (Bucharest: Editura Bizantină, 2011), 27.
St Călinescu, Povăţuitor în activitatea pastorală a preotului (Bucharest: Tipografia Gutenberg,
1908), 3.
Ibid., 7.
Florea Codreanu, Sămânţa de lângă cale (Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei Diecezane, 1929).
Mihai Săsăujan, ‘Ţara românească şi Moldova’, in Monahismul ortodox românesc: Istorie, contribuţii
şi repertorizare (Bucharest: Editura Basilica, 2014), 615.
Epiharia Moisescu, O chestie de interes moral (Bucharest: Minerva, 1910), 4.
Romanian Orthodox Christianity
27
Monastic properties from the new territories were nationalized during the land
reforms of 1921 just as those in the Old Kingdom had been sixty years earlier,
although monasteries in Bessarabia remained more active than those in the Old
Kingdom thanks to the patronage of Metropolitan Gurie Grosu.42 Nonetheless,
his successor, Metropolitan Visarion Puiu, argued that inter-war monasticism
‘is in the most concerning stages of decomposition. Totally lacking in spiritual
models, writings that show its necessity and the need for its reorganization,
and leaders who can put these things into practice, the trunk of monasticism
is drying out, the leaves wither, the roots weaken, and its entire appearance is
pitiful.’43
Preaching became an increasingly common practice during the early
twentieth century as priests began writing their own sermons instead of reading
from published collections of homilies. Romanian Orthodox writers connected
to the magazine Predicatorul (The Preacher) had vigorously promoted preaching
during the late 1850s, but the enthusiasm surrounding preaching and the number
of publications on the topic that appeared after 1900 was unprecedented.44
Scores of books appeared exhorting priests to preach regular sermons on
Sunday mornings and it became common for individuals to publish collections
of sermons for particular audiences.45 Prominent preachers began delivering
sermons on the radio, taking their message directly into people’s homes.46
Sermons were not always high quality, as many priests were discovering the
sermon as a genre for the first time. As Dumitru Buzatu noted in 1933, preaching
is easier said than done and empty churches were a sign that priests needed time
and training if they were going to become better preachers.47
42
43
44
45
46
47
Eugen Onicov, ‘Viaţa monastică din Basarabia îni cadrul României Mare (1918–1940)’, in
Monahismul ortodox românesc: Istorie, contribuţii şi repertorizare (Bucharest: Editura Basilica,
2014), 867–71.
Visarion Puiu, Monahismul ortodox din România de astazi (Chişinău: Tipografia Uniunii Clericilor
Ortodocşi din Basarabia, 1936), 1. See also Visarion Puiu, Glas în pustie: Îmbunătăţiri bisericeşti
întârziate (Chişinău: Tipografia Eparhiala ‘Cartea Românească’, 1931), 123.
Comşa, Istoria predicei la români, 171ff.; Teleanu Bogdan Aurel, Metaforă și misiune: Valorificarea
literaturii laice în predica românească (Iaşi: Doxologia, 2007).
On the importance of preaching, see Coman Vasilescu, Datoria preotului de a predica învăţătura
creştină (Bucharest,: Tipografia Cărţilor Bisericeşti, 1900); Constantin Nazarie, Călăuza
predicatorului (Bucharest: Tipografia Cărţilor Bisericeşti, 1902); Alexandru Popescu-Cernica,
Predica şi foloasele ei (Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice Universala, I. Ionescu, 1911). For
examples of collected sermons, see Grofşoreanu, Scrieri pentru popor; A. Cristea, Colecţiune de
predici populare (Bucharest: Tipografia ‘Speranţa’, 1907); Luţcan, Cuvinte de îndrumare.
Toma Chiricuţă, Gh. Comana, Marin C. Ionescu and Manea S. Popescu, Chemări de departe: predici
la radio (Bucharest: Editura Librariei Pavel Suru, 1929); ‘Faptele proaspete din viaţă bisericească’,
Luminătorul, February 1937, 117–18.
D. Buzatu, ‘Predicatorii’, Calendarul, 2 October 1933, 3.
28
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
The sermons of the future patriarch, Miron Cristea, reveal a strong emphasis
on morality and good deeds. The image that comes through in Cristea’s sermons
is of a jealous and vengeful God who punishes wrongdoers but rewards the
righteous. When floods devastated the Banat in 1910, he distributed a circular
saying that
I have arrived at the conclusion that the warnings of the prophet Ezekiel have
come upon the inhabitants of this region: ‘I … bring up the deep over you, and
the great waters cover you’. (26:19) Considering this unhappy event in cold blood
brought to mind the thought that our Heavenly Father has disciplined us for our
sins and errors. He had to, for in this way he revealed his anger at those who have
forgotten and ignored his stories, as Jesus the son of Sirah tells us: ‘And the Lord
will show his mighty voice, so as to let his anger be seen in his outstretched arm …
with thunder, hail, and heavy rain’.
(30:30)48
At the same time, Cristea consistently portrayed Romanians as an oppressed
people suffering at the hands of foreign rulers. He compared them to ‘a flower, a
noble plant, or a useful vegetable planted in uncared for and uncultivated ground,
choked by hidden weeds that are killing it’.49 Only Jesus’s commandments could
save them from their condition: ‘Without [God’s teachings] life is a trial and the
future is a riddle (enigma) that we cannot unravel; a mystery that we cannot
penetrate. But the law of Christ brings us light and shows us the way to happiness
in this world and eternal joy in the next.’50
Ştefan Călinescu, a respected teacher and priest in Bucharest, wrote that
parish priests should ‘find time to speak, in particular, to the lost, showing them
the evil they do to themselves, to their families and to the society they live in’.
He gave a long list of topics that preachers should focus on which provides an
insight into Orthodox preaching of the period. Călinescu said that sermons
should ensure that lay people might not only know how to recite:
1) The symbol of the faith, but to understand it properly;
2) To explain the ten commandments;
3) The commandments of the church;
48
49
50
Episcopal circular, 1910, ANIC, Fond Miron Cristea, Dosar 1902/1, f. 25. The quote from Sirah 30:30
is entirely fictitious. No such verse exists in the Bible.
Elie Cristea, ‘Cuvântare la Asociaţiuni pentru literature română şi cultura poporului roman la 12/25
Mai 1902’, in ANIC, Fond Miron Cristea, Dosar 1902/1, f. 3.
Miron Cristea, ‘Circulară’, 6 December 1910, in ANIC, Fond Miron Cristea, Dosar 1902/1, f. 92.
Romanian Orthodox Christianity
29
4) An understanding of the Our Father prayer, which every Christian should be
able to recite piously;
5) To explain the parables in the gospels, which contain the most beautiful
examples of those morals necessary for life;
6) To explain the church service and the mysteries of Orthodoxy;
7) To explain the Gospel and the Apostle and the holy days of the year;
8) To speak about the duties of husbands and wives in a family or a marriage;
9) About raising children;
10) About the duty of care that every citizen has to educate and guide their
children towards the right occupation;
11) About the ties of goodness and brotherly love between citizens;
12) About love of country, or patriotism;
13) About the duty to respect the laws of the country and to submit ourselves to
the authorities of the country and the church for the good public ordering of
the state;
14) About the health of the body, which can be injured by poor housing, bad
food or illnesses that come from dirtiness or are transmitted from person to
person;
15) About the health of the soul, which is darkened by bad habits, cravings and
drunkenness;
16) About helping poor widows and orphans who have nowhere to lay their
heads, no help in sickness and loneliness or who beg on the streets;
17) About decorating the town with useful plants;
18) About respecting your neighbour’s life and property, for this is why we come
together in communities;
19) About the duty to avoid strangers and foreigners who spread unsettling ideas
among the children of the Romanian people;
20) About forming community groups for helping homeless orphans and the
sick.51
In the 1921 History of Preaching in Romania, Grigore Comşa critically assessed
the best published collections of sermons available. Many of the sermons he
discussed were translations from the Church Fathers, but a number were by
talented preachers experimenting with the sermon as a new genre. Comşa was
not always impressed. Describing Coman Vasilescu’s collection of sermons from
1902, he commented that ‘in some sermons he talks about a topic without going
51
Călinescu, Povăţuitor în activitatea pastorala, 14–16.
30
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
into it in any depth … Some sermons lack life; they are missing any practical
and unifying aspect’. He noted that Visarion Puiu’s sermons were written ‘in
urban church language’ even though they had originally been published in a
magazine for peasants. Puiu rarely quoted Scripture, Comşa said, and focused
on topics such as ‘love of the church, education, submission to authorities,
theft, drunkenness, slander, Christian love, fasting, prayer, etc.’. Ilie Teodorescu’s
sermons, on the other hand, were mostly exercises in explaining church doctrine.
Teodorescu quoted frequently from the Bible but lacked any stories to help his
listeners connect what he was saying to real life. Comşa consistently praised
Iuliu Scriban’s preaching, noting that ‘we find a clear analysis of different virtues
in every sermon’ and showing that Scriban always chose his topics based on the
appropriate dates on the church calendar.52
Other manuals on preaching developed the sermon from different angles.
In Heart and Soul: Homiletics of our Times (1927), Marin Ionescu argued that
priests should master secular knowledge so that they could be convincing from
the pulpit. In another book he suggested that preaching served the same function
as the liturgy, which is to say that it should elevate the mind.53 Grigore Cristescu
argued that the preacher must be a psychologist and establish a spiritual
connection with his audience if he wanted to win them over.54 Cristescu’s
sermons focused on relating the Bible to problems of modern life. In a book
from 1927 he promised to
Present the Saviour in various social positions so that we understand how to
become his disciples according to our function in life. Like in a movie, we will
see him as a worksite supervisor, a businessman, a bank director, a theatre
director, a teacher, a judge, a military general, a lawyer, a doctor, a politician, a
journalist, a prison director, a university student, a society president, an editor
and a librarian.55
Similarly, the Old Testament scholar Ion V. Georgescu wondered
what chaos would the words of the prophet [Isaiah] produce today if he
spoke to the priests of Christ’s church in our country? If today’s life required
52
53
54
55
Comşa, Istoria predicei la români, 193–201.
Marin Ionescu, Inimă şi suflet: Omiletica vremurilor noastre (Bucharest, 1927) and Marin Ionescu,
Altarul şi amvonul (Bucharest, 1942), quoted in Vasile Gordon and Silviu Tudose, ‘The Development
of Pastoral Studies: Homelitics, Catechetics and Pastoral Theology’, in Orthodox Theology in the 20th
Century and Early 21st Century: A Romanian Orthodox Perspective, ed. Viorel Ioniţă (Bucharest:
Basilica, 2013), 781.
Grigore Cristescu, Predică şi cateheză (Sibiu, 1929), quoted in ibid., 781–2.
Grigore Cristescu, Isus în viaţă modernă (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane, 1927), 5.
Romanian Orthodox Christianity
31
sacrifice and a spirit of sacrifice from everyone; if the priests were called
to transform society? ‘Depart from the world and sacrifice everything; by
descending into the world some of you might change some of what you have
destroyed!’56
Successful preaching required a sound knowledge of the Bible, which not
all priests had. Romanian dogmatic theology of the early twentieth century
relied heavily on translated lectures by Russian and Greek theologians with a
strong scholastic bent, and no Romanian moral theology to speak of had yet
been written.57 In 1924 the New Testament professor and future metropolitan
Nicolae Colan commented that ‘the West continually asks us for doctrinal
books of our orthodoxy. We do not have them and we do not miss them. The
faith of the first seven Ecumenical Councils is enough for us.’58 The attitude of
Colan’s colleagues was already changing before the ink was cold on his article.
The most positive thing Iuliu Scriban could find to say about Romanian
theological publishing was that students now had access to some textbooks
of questionable quality and a commentary that covered most of the New
Testament.59 According to Gala Galaction, the state of learning was so dismal
that ‘in all of Romania there are probably only ten or fifteen theologians who
know Orthodox doctrine’.60 Teodor Păcescu agreed, noting that, because of
the poor state of education, ‘the seminarian and the theology student learns
the religious sciences for his exams, not for himself (nu pentru conştiinţa sa)’,
and consequently few priests really knew much about their own religion.61
Such complaints were not unique to Orthodoxy. Greek Catholic writers
similarly bemoaned ‘the almost complete lack of textbooks for our theological
seminaries’ in the early 1920s.62
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
Georgescu was referring specifically to Isaiah 52:11. Ion V. Georgescu, Actualitatea profeţilor
(Bucharest: Tiparul Academic, 1934), 28.
Ştefan Buchiu and Cristinel Ioja, ‘The Development of Dogmatic Studies’, in Orthodox Theology
in the 20th Century and Early 21st Century: A Romanian Orthodox Perspective, ed. Viorel Ioniţă
(Bucharest: Basilica, 2013), 396; Nichifor Crainic, Zile albe – zile negre: memorii (Bucharest: Casa
Editorială Gândirea, 1991), 93.
Nicolae Colan, ‘Ortodoxie şi esenţa ei’, Revista Teologică, 14, no. 2–3 (1924): 61, quoted in Ionuţ
Biliuţă, ‘Periphery as Center? The Fate of the Transylvanian Orthodox Church in the Romanian
Patriarchy’, in Discourse and Counter-Discourse in Cultural and Intellectual History, ed. Carmen
Andraş and Cornel Sigmirean (Sibiu: Astra Museum, 2014), 386.
Iuliu Scriban, Studiul pastoralei în biserica românească (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane,
1924), 6.
Gala Galaction, Jurnal, vol. 3 (Bucharest: Editura Albatros, 1999), 164.
Teodor P. Păcescu, ‘Propaganda neo-protestantă’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 January 1924, 244.
I. Volbură, ‘Chestiunea manualelor teologice’, Cultura creştină 9, no. 1–2 (1920): 52.
32
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Orthodox Biblical Studies in the nineteenth century was heavily reliant on
Catholic writings, but this began to change after the First World War.63 Only two
of the twelve works Iuliu Scriban listed in the bibliography to his 1922 textbook
on Biblical hermeneutics were by Orthodox writers. One was by an American
Methodist, another by a Reformed theologian from Germany and the other
eight were Roman Catholic scholars from continental Europe. All reflected the
latest developments in the field.64 A new generation of Romanian Orthodox
Biblical scholars came into its own in the 1920s, including Vasile Tarnavschi
(OT) and Vasile Gheorghiu (NT) at Cernowitz, Nicolae Colan (NT) at Sibiu and
Haralambie Rovenţa (OT) and Ion Popescu-Mălăieşti (NT) at Bucharest.65 The
‘neo-Patristic turn’ to the Church Fathers took place during the 1930s through
the work of theologians such as Dumitru Stăniloae and Vladimir Lossky, but
Romanian theologians had already begun to appreciate the value of the Church
Fathers as they found them presented in Russian textbooks of the late nineteenth
century.66 Not everyone was happy with the new direction Romanian theological
education was taking. Once again critics accused the reformers of introducing
Western ideas. The priest, archivist and politician Ştefan Meteş wrote that
theological education was now being
Delivered in the seminaries by lay professors who learned their culture from
Protestant universities in Germany. The professors and students from the
German and English Protestant theological faculties are a true catastrophe for
our church. Their souls and minds are disorderly, anarchic; they understand
nothing about how it is here and instead of consolidating the church, they
destroy and undermine it. The teaching in Catholic seminaries, where they learn
fanaticism and religious discipline loses us students who pass over to the law of
Rome.67
63
64
65
66
67
Vasile Mihoc, ‘The Development of the Biblical Studies’, in Orthodox Theology in the 20th Century
and Early 21st Century: A Romanian Orthodox Perspective, ed. Viorel Ioniţă (Bucharest: Basilica,
2013), 189.
Scriban, Manual de ermeneutică biblică, 4–5.
Mihoc, ‘Development of the Biblical Studies’, 190–3.
Adrian Marinescu, ‘Patrology and Related Studies in Orthodoxy in the 20th Century and Early 21st
Century: Schools and Research Directions’, in Orthodox Theology in the 20th Century and Early 21st
Century: A Romanian Orthodox Perspective, ed. Viorel Ioniţă (Bucharest: Basilica, 2013), 333–8.
Ştefan Meteş, ‘Câteva observaţii critice asupra Bisericii Româneşti în cei din urmă zece ani’,
Societatea de mâine 5, no. 22–4 (1928): 406, quoted in Florian Kührer-Wielach, ‘Orthodoxer
Jesuitismus, katholischer Mystizismus: Konfessionalismus in Rumänien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’,
in Orthodoxa Confessio?: Konfessionsbildung, Konfessionalisierung und ihre Folgen in der östlichen
Christenheit, ed. Mihai-D. Grigore and Florian Kührer-Wielach (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2018), 321.
Romanian Orthodox Christianity
33
Ironically, most of the leading Orthodox voices in inter-war Romania had all
been schooled in Western theological faculties abroad. Miron Cristea earned
his doctorate in Budapest, Nicolae Bălan and Gala Galaction studied at the
Franz-Josephs-University in Czernowitz, Vartolomeu Stănescu learned Catholic
and Protestant theology alongside law and sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris,
Irineu Mihălcescu studied in Berlin and Leipzig, Iuliu Scriban in Strasbourg and
Heidelberg, and Ioan Popescu-Mălăeşti in Strasbourg. Among the prominent
reforming hierarchs of the inter-war period, only Gurie Grosu and Visarion
Puiu had studied in an Orthodox country, which was to say, in Kiev. No matter
how often Orthodox leaders complained that Repenters were bringing Western
ideas into their Church, they were the ones whose theology had been profoundly
shaped by Western learning. Not only had they personally studied in Western
universities, they also quoted Protestant and Catholic writers in their own works
and encouraged the translation of Western Christian texts into Romanian. At
the same time, Orthodox priests and bishops alike cherished an Orthodox,
Romanian spirituality centred on the liturgy, the eucharist and the sacraments
of the Church.
34
2
Renewal
Responding to repeated complaints about apathy and irreligion of Romanian
Orthodox believers, a number of Church leaders engaged in concerted
campaigns to renew the interest of parish priests and lay Christians alike in
attending church services, reading the Bible and cultivating holy living. One
of the most outspoken pro-revival church publications of the early 1920s was
Noua revistă bisericească (The New Church Magazine). Established in Bucharest
during March 1919, Noua revistă bisericească was owned and edited by Teodor P.
Păcescu, a priest who had earned his diploma with a study on whether or not the
Bible was divinely inspired.1 Its editorial board included several distinguished
theologians and church leaders. ‘Our Orthodoxy is passing through a deep
crisis of understanding, method, and action’, Păcescu wrote in one issue.
‘Everything in our Orthodox church needs to be reestablished on the ancient
foundations of Orthodoxy and rejuvenated in today’s struggle to shape and
govern Orthodox Christian identity (conştiinţa creştină ortodoxă)’.2 Păcescu and
the other contributors to Noua revistă bisericească wanted a revived Orthodoxy
characterized by piety, good works, a passion for the study of the Bible and an
enthusiasm for spreading the gospel.3 Revival was a Protestant concept, however,
and had been the standard Protestant solution to religious indifference since
the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century. At first preachers had thought
of revivals as spontaneous, divine movements of the Holy Spirit, but by the
nineteenth century churchmen had begun organizing them and scheduling
them into the liturgical calendar.4 Orthodox leaders were aware of the Protestant
1
2
3
4
Teodor P. Păcescu, Inspiraţia carţilor sfintei scripturi: Teză pentru licenţă (Bucharest: Tipografia
Speranţa, 1907).
T. P. Păcescu, ‘Noui noştri episcopi’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 May 1923, 33.
P., ‘Cum întelege biserica unită intensificarea apostolatului în parohii?’ Noua revistă bisericească,
1 May 1923, 61.
Janice Holmes, Religious Revivals in Britain and Ireland, 1859–1905 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press,
2000), 168–9.
36
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
connotations that talk about revival had, and Păcescu counselled that ‘all these
efforts need to be directed, guided and defined lest we pass beyond Orthodox
dogma in our desire to evangelize and unexpectedly find ourselves in the camp
of the sectarians’.5
Despite their small numbers, Repenters featured heavily in discussions
about Romanian religiosity. The priest Gheorghe Sălcescu wondered why he
saw ‘a breathtaking fanaticism’ among ‘heretics’ such as Baptists, Brethren
and Seventh-Day Adventists, who are willing ‘to suffer beatings, (military)
prison, insults’ and who take their Bibles to church ‘to follow the sermon with
interest’, while among the Orthodox there was only ‘indifference’. The average
Orthodox believer, Sălescu wrote, ‘swears about his own faith, fights with his
brothers from the village and lives a life devoid of holiness, almost without
faith’.6 Păcescu and his colleagues attributed the rapid spread of Repenter
Christianity to the Romanian Orthodox Church’s (ROC’s) failure to satisfy
the widespread desire for a renewed spiritual life. He wrote, ‘the need for
repentance and spiritual rebirth, for religious activism, for an interiorization
of the Christian faith, for consistency between words and actions, cannot be
satisfied by mechanically carrying out church rituals. The sectarians profited
from this spiritual moment and attacked’.7 If it was to survive, they said, the
ROC needed to begin evangelizing more heavily. In the words of Petre Chirică,
‘it is a painful fact, but we have to admit that so far the Church has remained
silent. The Gospel has not been preached with zeal that it might serve the
will of Jesus Christ. Its servants have focused on other domains, they have
served zealously, but they have done no evangelistic work.’8 Orthodox leaders
decided that if they wished to remain competitive in the twentieth century they
would have to begin preaching, distributing literature, expounding Scripture
and developing intentional communities of pious believers whose holiness and
commitment rivalled that of the Repenters.
Attempts at renewing the Church began shortly before the First World War.
Regular congresses for priests and deacons in the Old Kingdom began in 1910,
which included discussions on how to run church services, how to confront
social problems and how to minister to young people. One writer recommended
that ‘the giving of blessed icons to school children is a powerful way of attracting
5
6
7
8
Teodor P. Păcescu, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 January 1922, 1.
Gh. Sălescu, ‘Fanatism şi indiferentism’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 May 1923, 36–7.
Teodor P. Păcescu, Noua revistă bisericească, July 1930, 1.
Petru Chirică, ‘Diferite soiuri de evanghelizare’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 April 1922, 6–7.
Renewal
37
their attention to sacred history. Coloured icons are preferred to uncoloured ones
because they stimulate much more the imagination and the happiest feelings.’9
The Church threw itself into printing church newspapers and establishing parish
libraries, and George Ursul writes that
By 1909, 3,032 village parishes [in the Old Kingdom] had libraries, mostly
with 150 volumes or less; the 398 city parishes surveyed in 1919 revealed
holdings of 500–2,000 volumes, some of them housed in their own buildings
and providing facilities for lectures and conferences. By 1920 as the result of
an active church press and the parish library movement, 123 societies of a
religious and cultural nature had been established and were conducted by
priests.10
There was a general consensus in the early 1920s that renewal was coming. The
poet Dimitrie Nanu wrote that ‘the breeze of a spiritual springtime has begun
to blow here and there: Father Gala Galaction, speaking from various pulpits
with his skill and vast erudition, Father Nicolai Popescu at the Măgureanu
Hermitage church, Father [Toma] Chiricuţă in Botoşani, Father Ion Petrescu
at the St. Visarion church, Simion Mehedinţi in pamphlets, Mihail Sadoveanu
through his most recent writings …’.11 Galaction, Popescu, Chiricuţă and
Petrescu were all dynamic preachers at prominent churches with exceptional
clerical careers ahead of them, while Mehedinţi and Sadoveanu were, among
other things, leading figures in the literary world. Toma Chiricuţă moved to
Bucharest later in the decade, where he began popular prayer evenings.12 As
Grigore Cristescu argued, prayer was central to religious renewal. ‘Orthodox
contemplation is not sterile and static’, he wrote. ‘It is essentially an infinitely
creative dynamism. The contemplative Christian is the most active Christian.
The most heroic. He is, completely, an earthly angel and a heavenly man.’13
Hesychast prayer had been central to the monastic revivals of the eighteenth
century. It was cultivated in the Burning Bush movement of the 1940s but was
largely missing from efforts at reform during the 1920s.14
9
10
11
12
13
14
Quoted in George R. Ursul, ‘From Political Freedom to Religious Independence: The Romanian
Orthodox Church, 1877–1925’, in Romania Between East and West: Historical Essays in Memory of
Constantin C. Giurescu, ed. Stephen Fischer-Galati, Radu Florescu and George Ursul (Boulder: East
European Monographs, 1982), 232.
Ibid., 233.
D. Nanu, Iisus vă cheamă (Bucharest: Atelierele Adeverul, 1923), 8.
Grigorie Comşa, Fiinţa şi necesitatea misionarismului (Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei Diecezane, 1932), 21.
Grigorie Cristescu, ‘Înapoi la Molitfelnic’, Predania, 15 February 1937, 7.
Serafim, Isihasmul: Tradiţie şi cultură românească (Bucharest: Editura Anastasia, 1994).
38
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Social Christianity
In addition to seeking to inspire greater lay participation in the church,
clerical writers began arguing that the ROC should engage more deeply with
contemporary social problems. ‘The Kingdom of God’, that is, ‘must start to reign
on the earth as it does in heaven’.15 The leading exponent of Social Christianity
was Vartolomeu Stănescu, Bishop of Râmnicului Noului Severin. Stănescu was
a passionate advocate of religious reform, arguing that ‘to keep [the church] as
we have it now, for old women, for people about to be married and for a few sick
people who still believe in the power of faith, would mean to replace the Gospel
with the Horologion, that is, with the sort of strict ritualism that was around in
pagan times as well’.16 Stănescu’s vision involved changing what clergy did day to
day. He said that the church ‘must start to come down from the abstract heights
that it had to climb in the days when it formed its dogmas and, without giving up
its teachings, spend its energies more in social work to pull the simple multitudes
out of the moral and material misery in which they suffer in our individualistic
times’.17 As a reaction against secular liberalism and the separation of church and
state, Social Christianity taught that the church must engage with society in new
ways that took secular modernity into account. This was an ideology that treated
not just individuals but society as a whole as a being ‘with its own body, soul,
and rules of life’; insisting that morality was social as well as individual and that
Christianity must move beyond teaching dogma into practical action.18 Initially
a reactionary theocratic movement led by French Catholics, it was enriched
by the influence of Christian Socialists such as Charles Kingsley and Frederick
Denison Maurice and expressed most powerfully in documents such as Pope
Leo XIII’s encyclical ‘On Capital and Labor’, Rerum Novarum.19 Gala Galaction
championed the idea of Christian Socialism in Romania through his journalism
and stories such as Roxana, in which a socialist priest uses the resources of his
15
16
17
18
19
Varolomeu Stănescu, Scurte încercări de creştinism social, reproduced in Vartolomeu Stănescu,
Puterile sociale ale creştinismului: Opere alese (Cluj-Napoca: Eikon, 2014), 173.
C., ‘În jurul alegerii mitropolitului primat. Convorbire cu P. S. Arhiereul Vartolomeiu Băcăoanul’,
Dacia 2, no. 27 (1920): 1, quoted in Cătălin Raiu, Democraţie şi statolatrie: Creştinismul social la
Bartolomeu Stănescu, Episcopul Râmnicului Noului Severin (1875–1954) (Bucharest: Editura
Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2014), 101.
Stănescu, Scurte încercări, in Stănescu, Puterile sociale, 179–80.
Ibid., 178.
Cătălin Raiu, Democraţie şi statolatrie: Creştinismul social la Bartolomeu Stănescu, Episcopul
Râmnicului Noului Severin (1875–1954) (Bucharest: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2014),
29–70.
Renewal
39
parish to help the poor.20 Galaction’s Christian Socialism did not gain many
followers but Stănescu’s position as bishop meant that he could enshrine Social
Christianity in a number of his episcopal initiatives.
Stănescu argued that
Social Christianity is simply about introducing an equitable regime into
the social body of the state, and of all human collectivities and institutions,
which guarantees people of all classes an impetus to work, payment for their
efforts, personal independence and moral prestige. Public offices and their
corresponding salaries are organic elements of the social body and they should
be organized equitably within this body; not in an arbitrary manner, but in line
with the gospel morality of Christ the Saviour in a just system that dignifies.21
Stănescu’s Social Christianity aimed at social reform through religious
regeneration. It resonated strongly with clerical calls for renewal while also
being able to frame itself as both anti-communist and anti-capitalist.22
In 1920 Stănescu established the Solidarity Social Christian Study Circle,
together with prominent Orthodox thinkers such as Vasile Ispir and Ştefan
Ionescu. In an attempt to articulate the problem that the circle set out to solve,
Ispir wrote in their magazine Solidaritatea (Solidarity) that ‘I have not seen and
I still don’t see any social activities in the church that reduce the misery of many
poor people, widows and orphans through offerings or by other means. I don’t
see an organized clergy fighting with all its might for social reforms, for charity,
for social assistance.’23 The Solidarity Study Circle only lasted until 1926, but
in 1923 Stănescu also created a clerical society called Rebirth (Renaşterea). He
strongly encouraged all priests in his episcopate to join and published a regular
magazine as well as holding frequent meetings for them to attend. The goals of
the society included providing further study for priests, educating the people
through the clergy, combating sectarianism, defending the prestige of the Church
and cultivating a spirit of solidarity between priests and their parishioners.24 In
the society’s inaugural manifesto, Stănescu explained that he wanted to
Bring together our church culture with secular culture, from which for the time
being we should appropriate only that knowledge which is absolutely necessary
20
21
22
23
24
Gala Galaction, O lume nouă (Bucharest: Editura Cugetarea, 1919); Gala Galaction, Roxana
(Bucharest: Editura Naționala S. Ciornei, 1930).
‘O nouă orientare pentru plata funcţionarilor publici şi a clerului’, Solidaritatea, 1, no. 9–10 (1920–
1): 330, quoted in Raiu, Democraţie şi statolagie, 199.
Raiu, Democraţie şi statolagie, 202.
Ibid., 111–12.
Sperlea, Vartolomeu Stănescu, 46–7.
40
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
for the health and the quality of life of our people. We will unite morality with
hygiene as the Old Testament does, and endeavour to help the people in their
labour and in managing their households and society as a whole. We contribute
not as specialists, but as moral guides and defenders of day to day needs of any
and every variety.25
Rebirth hosted lectures for priests on topics such as ‘Biblical interpretation’,
‘The impact of the Gospel on the family, society, and the state’ and ‘What can the
results of a Christian conscience be?’.26 Priests were then expected to form their
own ‘Christian centres’ and ‘Moral Councils’ (Sfaturi moralizători) in villages,
where they would teach people about the relationship between religion and
science, the dangers of pornography and sectarianism, angels and the relationship
between priests and laypeople.27 In a circular from 1924, Stănescu instructed that
Every priest, as president of the moral council, will make a list of sins and virtues
based on Holy Scripture and human habits and will study them together with the
members of his moral council. Study will be according to Holy Scripture, from
which members of the council – not the priest – will read indicated sections.
The priest will elaborate with real cases and examples from the history of the
church, national history, from anywhere in the world and from everyday life so
that people will understand the text of Holy Scripture.28
In line with official church policy Stănescu insisted that his priests avoid
becoming involved in politics, but he and other leading Church figures struggled
to follow this advice. Antisemitism was already deeply embedded in theological
seminaries. From the economic antisemitism found in the writings of Pomponiu
Morușca during the mid-1920s, by the mid-1930s even renowned Biblical
scholars such as Nicolae Neaga and Ioan Popescu-Mălăești were arguing that
the Jews were a cursed people; enemies of God.29 The theology student Valeriu
Beleuţă led a ‘nest’ of the fascist Legion of the Archangel Michael at the Andriene
Theological Academy in Sibiu as early as 1932, and a few years later a solid group
of young legionary theologians were employed in the Academy at Sibiu under
25
26
27
28
29
Vartolomeu Stănescu, ‘Ce urmărim cu Societatea Clerului Oltean “Renaşterea” şi cu organele de
propagandă’, Renaşterea 1, no. 1 (1922), reproduced in Stănescu, Puterile sociale, 341.
ANIC – Craiova, Fond Societatea Preoţească Renaşterea, Dosar 49/1930, ff. 1–2.
Ibid., f. 95.
Quoted in Sperlea, Vartolomeu Stănescu, 52.
Ionuţ Biliuţă, ‘Sowing the Seeds of Hate: The Antisemitism of the Orthodox Church in the Interwar
Period’, S:I.M.O.N. 3 (2016): 26–7; Ionuţ Biliuţă, ‘Arianizarea studiilor biblice în perioada interbelică:
O polemică în studiile biblice românești’, in Interpretarea Biblică între Biserică și Universitate:
perspective interconfesionale, ed. Alexandru Ioniță (Sibiu: Andreiană, 2016), 28–30.
Renewal
41
the patronage of Nicolae Bălan, including Liviu Stan, Nicolae Mladin, Spiridon
Cândea and Teodor Bodogae.30 Theologians such as Grigore Cristescu, Ion V.
Georgescu and Gheorghe Racoveanu joined the Legion during 1933 and 1934,
dedicating themselves to fascist activism until the movement was suppressed
in 1941.31 In Bessarabia Gurie Grosu, Visarion Puiu and Veniamin Pocitan
actively patronized legionary gatherings.32 Other reforming priests, including
Ioan Gheorghe Savin, Irineu Mihălcescu and Ion Popescu-Mozăceni, supported
A. C. Cuza’s antisemitic National Christian Defense League and encouraged
their students to do likewise.33
Stănescu began patronizing legionary gatherings in 1932. He performed
liturgies at their meetings, encouraged legionaries to do building projects on
churches in his episcope and priests spoke in his name when doing legionary
propaganda.34 In the process, Stănescu alienated local officials associated with
the National Liberal or Peasantist parties as well as coming into conflict with
other Church leaders he accused of corruption.35 A perfect storm of scandals
broke out around Stănescu in 1936. One of his cooks accused him of rape,
others accused him of promoting only people with legionary politics and still
others accused him of misappropriating church funds.36 On trial for corruption,
Stănescu resigned his post and withdrew to a monastery in 1938. It is tempting
to see a connection between Stănescu’s commitment to Christian social reform
and his involvement in fascist politics. His talk about reform, corruption and
self-sacrifice resonated perfectly with legionary discourses on the same topics.
At the same time, support for the Legion was widespread within the upper
echelons of the ROC and it is quite possible that anyone in Stănescu’s position
would have affiliated themselves with fascism for political gain regardless of
their theological convictions.
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
Ionuţ Biliuţă, ‘Un fascism regional? Cazul Academiei Teologice Andreiene din Sibiu (1930–1941)’,
in Cler, Biserică și Societate în Transilvania, sec. XVIII–XX, ed. Cornel Sigmirean and Corina Teodor
(Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2016), 404–24.
ACNSAS, Fond Informativ, Dosar 258626, f. 23, Dosar 233835, vol. 2, ff. 224–30, and Dosar 234303,
vol. 2, ff. 324–34.
Viorica Nicolencu, Extrema dreaptă în Basarabia (1923–1940) (Chişinău: Civitas, 1999), 84; Zosim
Oancea, ‘Ion Moţa şi Vasile Marin’, Lumina satelor, 24 January 1937, 1–2.
ANIC, Fond DGP, Dosar 1/1938, ff. 17–18; ACNSAS, Fond Penal, Dosar 011784, vol. 8, f. 202; I. G.
Popescu-Mozăceni, ‘Înviere şi trădare’, Apărarea naţională, 24 April 1927, 1.
Raiu, Democraţie şi statolagie, 173–81; ACNSAS, Fond Informativ, Dosar 236684, ff. 26–107.
ANIC, Fond DGP, Dosar 45/1937, ff. 4–10; C. Cernăianu, Răspuns adversarilor mei spre eterna lor
osândă (Bucharest: Tipografia Capitalei, 1934); Vartolomeu Stănescu, O lămurire în legatură cu
eparhia locală (Râmnicul Vâlcea: Tipografia Episcopul Vartolomei, 1938).
ACNSAS, Fond Informativ, Dosar 236684, ff. 26–30.
42
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Christian students and the YMCA
Orthodox currents of renewal also appeared among university students in
Bucharest thanks the to efforts of the Young Men’s Christian Association
(YMCA). A Congregationalist by the name of George Williams founded the
YMCA in London in 1844. With a strong focus on sport and recreation, the
organization flourished in an age of muscular Christianity and eugenic thinking.37
Based primarily in Britain and the United States, the YMCA first appeared in
Russia in 1868 and opened an office in Vienna in 1873, but had more success
in Bulgaria, where it began in 1899. It earned the respect of Romanians for its
work alongside the Red Cross during the First World War and began a concerted
effort to establish itself in Eastern Europe as a bulwark against communism once
the war was over.38
The American John Swift expressed the YMCA’s attitude towards work in
countries where the majority of the population was not Protestant succinctly
in 1889, arguing that ‘we are simply inviting our fellow Christian young men
in these distant lands to join us in systematic work for other young men. The
workers must be the native young men. From them will soon come the leaders
needed.’39 The YMCA opened in Romania in 1919 at the invitation of Queen
Maria.40 Staffed by two Americans and receiving money from British diplomats,
it nonetheless immediately began cultivating local students as future leaders of
the organization.41 The organization received the blessing of the metropolitans
Miron Cristea and Pimen Georgescu, the support of the government and invited
prominent public intellectuals such as Nicolae Iorga, Marin Ştefănescu, Vasile
Pârvan, Simion Mehedinţi and Isabella Sadoveanu to give lectures.42
The YMCA was legally incorporated as the Christian Youth Association
(Asociaţia Creştină a Tinerilor, ACT). Its statutes specified that ‘the Association’s
37
38
39
40
41
42
Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Kenneth Steuer, Pursuit of an ‘Unparalleled Opportunity’: American YMCA and Prisoner of War
Diplomacy among the Central Power Nations during World War I, 1914–1923 (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2009).
John Swift, quoted in Matthew Lee Miller, The American YMCA and Russian Culture: The
Preservation and Expansion of Orthodox Christianity, 1900–1940 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,
2012), 13.
‘Police report, 23 March 1943’, in ANIC, Fond DGP, Dosar 55/1937, ff. 25–27.
‘Referat, 7 June 1921’ and ‘Notă informativa, 27 Nov 1945’; reproduced in Carmen Ciornea, Sandu
Tudor şi asociaţiile studenţeşti creştine din România interbelică (Bucharest: Eikon, 2017), 153–6,
350–4.
‘Buletinul Asociaţiei Creştine a Femeilor şi Asociaţiei Creştine a Tinerilor, Nov 1920’ and ‘Referat,
7 June 1921’; reproduced in ibid., 145–56.
Renewal
43
principle focus is the education of young people in a Christian spirit, occupying
itself with their religious, social, national, intellectual and physical education as
well as with their protection and physical needs’. It also claimed
to help young people to establish a life worthy of the teachings of our Lord Jesus
Christ in accordance with the teachings of the Christian Orthodox Churches,
respecting and being in complete harmony with the other Christian confessions;
to develop true character, cultivating the spiritual virtues and enriching their
lives through the study and practice of Christian truths by serving their
neighbours; to continue unmoved in love for the Church, the country, and the
king and to resist all opposing currents.43
The YMCA expanded rapidly on university campuses after the turn of the
twentieth century and began outreach to Russian university students in 1909.44
With most YMCA workers being middle or upper class and university educated,
it was natural that the organization would turn to the universities when it
entered Romania. Romanian students established the Romanian Christian
Students’ Association (Asociaţia Studenţilor Creştinilor din România, ASCR)
in 1921, which became the Federation of Christian Students’ Associations in
Romania (Federaţia Asociaţiei Studenţilor Creştini din România, FASCR) in
1923 with the goal of ‘realizing the Christian ideal in individual and social life
by shaping Christian personalities within the student body and making the
Christian religion into an active ideal through the work of its members, capable
of influencing the world in fundamental ways’.45 The organization held annual
congresses, which until 1928 included the active involvement of YMCA leaders
in the country.
Student politics during the 1920s frequently used the label ‘Christian’, but
rarely in a spiritual sense. The largest and most vocal student organizations were
ultra-nationalist and antisemitic. From their roots on individual campuses they
came together to create the National Union of Christian Students in Romania
(Uniunea Naţională a Studenţilor Creştini din România, UNSCR) in 1925.
Known for their violence, hooliganism and rabid antisemitism, organized
Romanian students terrorized minority students, especially Jewish students,
and frequently came into conflict with the police and the military.46 FASCR thus
43
44
45
46
Statutul Asociaţiei Creştine a Tinerilor, in ANIC, Fond DGP, Dosar 55/1937, ff. 13–19.
Miller, The American YMCA and Russian Culture, 17; David P. Setran, The College Y: Student Religion
in the Era of Secularization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Quoted in Ionuţ Butoi, Mircea Vulcănescu: O microistorie a interbelicului românesc (Bucharest:
Editura Eikon, 2015), 99.
Roland Clark, Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2015), 28–62.
44
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
presented a puzzle to the authorities. One policeman commented on the 1924
FASCR congress that ‘although the members of the association are Christians,
and therefore antisemites, their propaganda is nonetheless based on conviction,
not on violence as the propaganda of the Student Centres is’.47 Whereas the
antisemitic students worked hard to exclude non-Romanian students and
promoted a misogynistic, male-dominated culture, FASCR actively included
Jewish and Hungarian students in its ranks and elevated women to important
leadership positions.48
As Ionuţ Butoi notes, FASCR’s language about a ‘rebirth’ of Christianity
in the face of a mechanized modernity and the need for ‘courage’ to provide
spiritual solutions for ‘a petrified humanity, a nation suddenly without direction
or orientation, a university student population without ideals but desperate to
have one’ echoed phrases found in the writings of the ‘Young Generation’.49 A
group of intellectuals led by Mircea Eliade and including several people who
were also involved in FASCR, the Young Generation claimed to be pioneering a
new spirituality that would renew Romanian culture, by which they meant first
and foremost art, theatre, literature, music and philosophy.50 Open to a diverse
range of influences, members of FASCR celebrated French Catholic writers and
poets such as Leon Bloy and Charles Péguy, and Mircea Vulcănescu adopted a
variety of neo-medievalism after spending time in Paris with theologians such
as Jacques Maritain and Nikolai Berdiaev.51
While the Young Generation was heavily influenced by the philosopher Nae
Ionescu, members of FASCR also embraced the ideas of the sociologist Dumitru
Gusti, seeing them as a means for realizing the sort of Social Christianity
preached by Vartolomeu Stănescu by improving the living conditions of other
students. One FASCR leader, Ştefan Georgescu, wrote in 1923 that
When our student body raised the alarm that it was suffering in poorly
maintained dormitories, that it ate at inadequate and poorly run canteens, that
it does not have the books and living conditions necessary for study, this cry
found an echo in our souls … A handful of ASCR students formed an action
committee and took up the difficult but lovely instruction of Christ to work at
supporting students.52
47
48
49
50
51
52
Quoted in Butoi, Mircea Vulcănescu, 103.
Ibid., 104, 107; ‘Referat, 7 June 1921’, reproduced in Ciornea, Sandu Tudor, 153–6.
Butoi, Mircea Vulcănescu, 109.
Cristina A. Bejan, Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 25–57.
Philip Vanhaelemeersch, A Generation ‘Without Beliefs’ and the Idea of Experience in Romania
(1927–1934) (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2006), 139–40.
Quoted in Butoi, Mircea Vulcănescu, 111.
Renewal
45
They organized a market for second-hand clothes, gave out food vouchers,
provided information about exams and university life and even ran their own
clinic staffed by university doctors.53 Sports also played a major role in the
life of the organization, including gymnastics, volleyball, boxing and table
tennis.54
The YMCA claimed not to be a missionary organization but there was a close
association between its work and Protestant missions. Matthew Lee Miller writes
that ‘by 1900 more than 50 percent of the active American Protestant foreign
missionaries were former “student volunteers,” participants in the Student
Volunteer Movement, the international outreach of the YMCA and the YWCA’.55
It nonetheless worked hard to develop close ties with the Orthodox Church.
The organization held a congress in Bucharest in 1923 to which it invited
representatives of the Romanian, Bulgarian, Greek and Yugoslav Orthodox
Churches, who participated ‘on the condition that the Orthodox Christian
members of the Association confess the Orthodox faith, remaining practicing
children of the church and using it for the purpose of educating Christian priests
within ACT’.56
The blending of evangelical Protestantism with Orthodoxy in the FASCR is
evident from the titles of the talks given by students at the 1924 congress. British
students attending the conference spoke about ‘The Bible and Scripture’ and
‘Contemporary missions’, and a Hungarian student discussed ‘Luther and Calvin’,
whereas Romanian students gave talks on ‘What Jesus thinks about holiness and
submission to the will of God’, ‘The Virgin Mary’ and ‘Patriotism’. Imre Lajos,
a Professor of Protestant Theology from Cluj attended some sessions, as did
Vasile Ispir, the General Secretary at the Ministry of Religious Denominations
and Professor of Orthodox Missiology at the University of Bucharest.57 The
YMCA also worked closely with Russian émigrés at the St Serge Theological
Academy in Paris.58 Some of these theologians attended the FASCR conference
in 1925, contributing new and fecund Orthodox perspectives that inspired the
Romanian students.59
As a student movement, FASCR existed in permanent tension with the
antisemitic UNSCR. The UNSCR also enjoyed the patronage of senior Church
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
Butoi, Mircea Vulcănescu, 113.
Ciornea, Sandu Tudor, 74, n. 88.
Miller, The American YMCA and Russian Culture, 15.
Ciornea, Sandu Tudor, 67.
‘Raport, 11 Sept 1924’, reproduced in Ciornea, Sandu Tudor, 164–8.
Miller, The American YMCA and Russian Culture, 207–25.
Butoi, Mircea Vulcănescu, 120–1.
46
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
figures including Metropolitan Pimen Georgescu, Archbishop Gurie Grosu
and the future patriarch Nicodim Munteanu.60 At first the antisemitic students
noticed few differences between them. In one article from Ogorul nostru (Our
Pride) in July 1924, the author praised the American YMCA, noting that ‘the
movement of moral and religious renewal and the fight against the Yids is not
just happening in Romania’, as if antisemitism was a core programme of the
YMCA.61 This state of affairs did not last long and that September antisemitic
students attended the FASCR conference in order to disrupt it by attacking
Jews.62 Two years later the UNSCR congress at Iaşi passed a resolution about
The YMCA: Recognizing the upsetting activities of the international Yid
associations – under cover of different charities of which the above-named
society is one – we request that the appropriate ministries place the abovenamed society under surveillance and curtail its activities so that it would not
influence the Christian student associations and thus inhibit their nationalist
activities. In the case that its international humanitarian (communist) character
be proven the students ask that it be abolished.63
The UNSCR claimed that the YMCA was bringing foreign missionaries
into the country who then worked to support Repenter groups. They also
blamed the YMCA for the fact that the International Student Confederation had
expelled them for being too antisemitic.64
The popularity of FASCR dropped markedly in the face of opposition from
the antisemitic students and its leadership began to question their affiliation
with the YMCA from August 1927 onwards, when the right-wing philosopher
Nae Ionescu and the celebrated writer and New Testament scholar Grigorie
Pișculescu, better known by his pen name of Gala Galaction, both attended
the FASCR congress in Bran. Although he was well known as a philo-Semite,
Galaction had attended the UNSCR congress in Chişinău in March and was a
dedicated opponent of Miron Cristea’s attempts to form ties with the Anglican
Church.65 Ionescu spoke about the difference between religions that are or are
60
61
62
63
64
65
‘Raport informativ, Dec 1926’, ‘Raport informativ, 16 March 1927’ and ‘Dare de seamă asupra
congresului studenţesc de la Mânăstirea Neamţu, 8 August 1927’; reproduced in Ciornea, Sandu
Tudor, 191–210, 216–25, 235–67.
‘Asociaţiile creştine’, Ogorul nostru, 30 July 1924, 3.
‘Telegrama cifrată, Sept 1924’; reproduced in Ciornea, Sandu Tudor, 162.
Quoted in Butoi, Mircea Vulcănescu, 117.
Ciornea, Sandu Tudor, 89, 109.
‘Dare de seamă asupra congresului studenţesc de la Mânăstirea Neamţu, 8 August 1927’; reproduced
in Ciornea, Sandu Tudor, 216–25. On Galaction’s opposition to ecumenicism, see Galaction, Jurnal,
vol. 3, 213, 227, 241–2.
Renewal
47
not based on Tradition, and the following day he published an article in Cuvântul
attacking theologians who claimed to be both Anglican and Orthodox. Two
weeks later he wrote another piece accusing the YMCA of trying to ‘modernize
Orthodoxy’.66 The student Mircea Vulcănescu, who became a great admirer of
Ionescu, wrote that at this congress
We in ASCR had discovered, together, by ourselves, the call of ‘Social Christianity’
from books by [Walter] Rauschenbusch and [Harry Emerson] Fosdik67 and we
were waiting for salvation to come this century through the realization of the
Gospel in souls and in society; immediately, within a generation, with a sort
of lavish jubilation in which religious values would blend with a whole garden
of less pure and less religious emotions which would come from somewhere,
though we weren’t quite sure where … Nae Ionescu said firmly to those of us
who wanted to hear … that Christianity with its heavenly and earthly purposes
is one thing and that intellectual promiscuity and that vague spirituality which
claimed to be Christian in some circles of our young people was quite another.68
For his part, Galaction turned to Sandu Tudor, another student associated with
FASCR, and recruited his help converting theology students in Chişinău, who
he described as ‘mostly completely illiterate in terms of the Gospel’, into ‘citizens
of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ’.69 Galaction had little patience with the UNSCR’s
violence and antisemitism and lobbied the government to shut down future
UNSCR congresses later that year.70 Like Vulcănescu, Tudor turned his back
on the YMCA at this time. The president of the YMCA’s Romanian patronage
committee, I. D. Protopopescu, responded to Ionescu’s attack by specifying
that ‘the Association’s goal is to form young people’s character according to
the norms of Christian morality. It does not involve itself in religious matters,
leaving this to the churches of the different countries it works in’.71 Tudor was
horrified at these claims. He wrote back, again in Cuvântul, asking Protopoescu
What do you call the so-called ‘Bible circles’ that I took part in, in which we
explained Scripture according to Protestant methods? What do you have to say
about the completely lay communal prayers that that I took part in at 17 Sălciilor
66
67
68
69
70
71
Nae Ionescu ‘Dumineca’, Cuvântul, 29 August 1927, 1 and Nae Ionescu ‘Y.M.C.A.’, Cuvântul,
15 September 1927, 1; reproduced in Ciornea, Sandu Tudor, 272–5.
Both Rauschenbusch and Fosdik were Baptist pastors from the New York area known as leading
exponents of Social Christianity.
Quoted in Butoi, Mircea Vulcănescu, 126.
Galaction, Jurnal, vol. 3, 208.
Ibid., vol. 3, 208–10.
I. D. Protopopescu, ‘În chestiunea Y.M.C.A.’, Cuvântul, 17 September 1927, 3; reproduced in
Ciornea, Sandu Tudor, 276–7.
48
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Street? Do you know what the Week of Prayer is, when all [YMCA] branches
around the world have moments of silence? What do you have to say about the
religious library I know on Sălciilor Street, which has books of pure Protestant
guidance? What do you say about the fact that the Association of Christian
Students was housed at the headquarters of the YMCA society with hidden
aspirations before it was moved? What about the missionaries and foreign
propagandists who come regularly every year? What are the public lectures on
religious topics? The YMCA does no religious activity? Then why does one of
the current American directors have a theological education and, it seems to
me, was even a pastor?72
The FASCR definitively broke with the YMCA in April 1928 on the grounds that
‘the current leadership of the YMCA does not respect the so-called state church,
which is to say that it does not apply Orthodoxism’.73 Its congress that month
was attended by both Ionescu and Galaction, and the organization came under
the watchful leadership of Archimandrite Tit Simedrea, who encouraged the
students to develop closer ties with other Balkan Orthodox Churches.74 As Ionuţ
Butoi argues, the character FASCR had had during the early 1920s under the
leadership of individuals such as Mircea Vulcănescu and Sandu Tudor changed
significantly after 1928. Now shaped by what Butoi calls ‘a second generation’
of students led by Paul Costin Deleanu, FASCR embraced the Orthodoxism of
Nichifor Crainic and Nae Ionescu alongside the increasingly right-wing politics
of the ROC.75 As an ultra-nationalist journalist and newspaper editor, Deleanu
associated himself closely with Ionescu’s fascist politics during the 1930s.76
What had threatened to become a schismatic movement with Protestant
overtones was brought back into the fold of Romanian Orthodoxy by the direct
involvement of prestigious Orthodoxist figures such as Nae Ionescu, Gala
Galaction and Tit Simedrea, who personally mentored the most promising of these
students and guided them into a more socially and politically acceptable form of
Christianity. The fate of Social Christianity, the YMCA and FASCR suggests that
the stakes involved in renewing Orthodoxy were as much political as they were
72
73
74
75
76
Sandu Tudor, ‘Urmare la Y.M.C.A.’, Cuvântul, 27 September 1927, 2; reproduced in ibid., 278–80.
‘Referat, 18 April 1928’, reproduced in ibid., 329–30.
‘Referat, April 1928’, reproduced in ibid, 325–8.
Butoi, Mircea Vulcănescu, 129–36.
ACSNAS, Fond Informativ, Dosar 234303, vol. 2, ff. 324–34. See also Deleanu’s newspaper, Ideea
românească, from 1935.
Renewal
49
spiritual. Church leaders recognized that socially engaged Christianities were
politically potent, and they insisted that the efforts of Christian laypeople serve
the political interests of the Church lest they unknowingly benefited foreign
powers.
Social Christianity, the YMCA and FASCR show that attempts to combine lay
Orthodoxy with political nationalism were already underway in the early 1920s,
emerging in the wake of a new openness to Western Christianity that flourished
in the immediate post-war years.
50
3
A Contested Patriarchate
Establishing an autocephalous patriarchate in Greater Romania was far from a
straightforward process. It involved five years of heated debate and negotiation
to bring four churches with their own theological and political cultures together
under a single umbrella. The Orthodox Church in the Old Kingdom had been
firmly subordinated to the Romanian state before the war, while Orthodox
believers in Bessarabia were members of the Russian Orthodox Church and
Orthodox Christians had their separate metropolitanates in Bukovina and in
Transylvania, each with its own history and approaches to church governance.
Led by ambitious metropolitans and bishops, each region hoped to shape the
new patriarchate in its own image. When Miron Cristea allied the Romanian
Orthodox Church (ROC) with the policies of the Liberal dynasty from the
Old Kingdom after the First World War, he cemented nation-building as the
language which Church leaders had to speak if they wanted to see their plans
succeed, but without placating the strong regional rivalries that festered within
the Holy Synod.
Orthodoxy in Old Kingdom Romania
After being dominated by Greek bishops and theologians for several hundred
years, the churches in Wallachia and Moldavia had slowly come under
Romanian control from the beginning of the nineteenth century, along with
politics and cultural life.1 Enlightenment ideas about national independence and
the importance of education penetrated the Romanian churches both through
1
Constantin Iordachi, ‘From Imperial Entanglements to National Disentanglement: The “Greek
Question” in Moldavia and Wallachia, 1611–1863’, in Entangled Histories of the Balkans. Vol. 1:
National Ideologies and Language Policies, ed. Roumen Dontchev Daskalov and Tchavdar Marinov
(Leiden: Brill, 2013), 67–148.
52
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Greek scholars in Bucharest and Iaşi and through Moldavian church leaders
educated in Kiev.2 As metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia between 1819 and 1821,
Dionisie Lupu encouraged young Romanians to study in the West. He worked
with Gheorghe Lazăr and other Romanians from Transylvania to transform the
Greek-dominated Princely Academy in Bucharest into Saint Sava College, an
institute of higher education specifically for Romanians, as well as publishing
a Romanian-language church newspaper and choosing Romanians instead of
Greeks as church officials. In Moldavia, Metropolitan Veniamin Costachi led
his own efforts to ‘Romanianize’ the Church, establishing the Socola seminary
at Iaşi, publishing liturgical books in Romanian and electing only Romanian
bishops.3 Church leaders believed that a strong church was the key to a strong
Romanian society. Hieromonk Eufrosin Poteca wrote to the metropolitan in
Bucharest from Paris in 1824, asking
Do you really want to raise the Romanian people out of ignorant darkness?
Reward the clergy. Without asking a cent from the priests, give a stable position
and an honest living to all priests who are able to teach children in the villages,
provoking those without education into making themselves worthy of such an
income. For so long as the priests remain in their current situation the people
have no chance to become enlightened. The priests are the salt and light of the
people; if they have lost their saltiness and live in darkness, what will the people
be like?4
Romanian culture did not mean independence, though. Facing the restrictions
placed on them by the Organic Regulation, Moldavian bishops struggled against
the attempts of Prince Mihail Sturza to control the Church throughout the 1830s
and 1840s.5 Romanian priests threw their support behind the revolutionary
movements of 1848, praying
Holy liberty,
Who art in Heaven come down to earth,
Hallowed be your name,
2
3
4
5
Ionuţ Biliuţă, ‘“Agenţii schimbării”: Clerul ortodox din Principatele Române de la regimul feudal la
statul naţional’, in ‘‘Ne trebuie oameni!’: Elite intelectuale şi transformări istorice în România modern
şi contemporană, ed. Cristian Vasile (Târgovişte: Editura Cetatea de Scaun, 2017), 45–7.
Lucian N. Leustean, ‘The Romanian Orthodox Church’, in Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism
in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe, ed. Lucian N. Leustean (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2014), 104–6.
Letter, Eufrosin Poteca to Metropolitan Grigorie III, Paris, 15 September 1824. Reproduced in
Nicolae Isar, Biserică-stat-societate în România modern (1821–1914): Sinteză şi culegere de documente
(Bucharest: Editura Universitară, 2014), 82.
Leustean, ‘The Romanian Orthodox Church’, 106–11.
A Contested Patriarchate
53
Your Kingdom come,
Your will be done,
In Romania as it is in France.
Give us this day the brotherhood we desire,
Together with justice and unity,
And break our chains of slavery,
As we also break the chains of our own slaves,
And lead us not into quarrels,
But rescue us from the Barbarian.6
The Moldavian Church turned decisively against Istanbul in the two years
leading up to the unification of the Romanian principalities in 1859. Whereas
the Greek clergy opposed unification and urged the Romanian metropolitans
to submit themselves to the leadership of the ecumenical patriarch in Istanbul,
Romanian bishops, priests and monks led by Metropolitan Sofronie Miclescu
encouraged popular gatherings in support of a Romanian nation-state and
argued that the new state deserved its own autocephalous church.7
Things did not always go the Church’s way after the two principalities united
in 1859 into a single Romanian nation-state under the rule of Alexandru Ion
Cuza. The government passed a ‘Law for the Secularization of the Monasteries’
in 1863, declaring that ‘all the property of the monasteries of Romania are and
remain the property of the state’. It limited salaries of the monks and insisted
that the Church could not administer its own funds without going through state
officials.8 Cuza further marginalized the Greek clergy by making Romanian
the official language of the Church and united the metropolitanates of UngroWallachia and Moldavia into one church under a single synod. As Lucian Leustean
points out, one implication of making the ROC independent of the ecumenical
patriarch was that it was now under Cuza’s control.9 Cuza decreed that ‘the
metropolitans and bishops of Romania will be appointed by the ruler following
their presentation at the Ministry of Denominations [Ministerul Cultelor], [and]
after deliberations by the Council of Ministers’.10 A handful of bishops protested
6
7
8
9
10
‘Rugăciunea românilor’, Pruncul român (1848). Reproduced in Isar, Biserică-stat-societate, 104.
Biliuţă, ‘Agenţii schimbării’, 49–59; Leustean, ‘The Romanian Orthodox Church’, 113–15; Isar,
Biserică-stat-societate, 107–77.
‘Lege pentru secularizarea averilor mănăstireşti (15 Sept 1863)’. Reproduced in Paul Brusanowski,
Stat şi Biserică în Vechea Românie între 1821–1925 (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană,
2010), 249.
Lucian N. Leustean, ‘The Political Control of Orthodoxy in the Construction of the Romanian State,
1869–1914’, European History Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2007): 64–5.
‘Lege pentru numirea de mitropoliţi şi episcopi eparhioţi în România (1865)’. Reproduced in
Brusanowski, Stat şi Biserică, 252.
54
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
strongly against Cuza’s control of the synod. In one pamphlet Neofit Scriban
attacked Cuza’s supporters ‘who all shout: we have no other emperor than Caesar
and he must be the President of our Church Synod’. ‘Not true’, Scriban wrote, ‘we
have another Emperor – Christ our Lord, the one who brought true liberty and
brotherhood’.11 Accused of promoting ‘foreign propaganda’, Scriban refused his
appointment to the synod and retired to a monastery. With a few exceptions,
most other Church leaders accepted the changes.12
The ROC also supported Cuza’s successor, Prince Carol I, who declared in
the Constitution of 1866 that ‘the Eastern Orthodox religion is the dominant
religion of the Romanian state’. Carol’s constitution kept Cuza’s synod, and the
metropolitan-primate was still appointed by the monarch.13 Further legislative
reforms continued to reduce the autonomy of the ROC during Carol’s reign.
In 1872 the government limited the number of people eligible to become
bishops and metropolitans and decreed that they would now be appointed by an
Electoral College that included members of parliament.14 The result, Leustean
notes, was the creation of ‘a small circle of people who could be controlled more
easily by the regime’.15 More regulations followed in 1873, reminding priests
that they were subject to the civil legal system, introducing new administrative
requirements, including an insistence that priests keep a record of their
parishioners, preventing lay people from speaking in church and requiring
bishops to ensure that ‘the clergy preach the word of God in church and teach
the people the Orthodox faith, piety, and Christian morals at every appropriate
opportunity’.16 The journal Biserica Ortodoxa Română (The Romanian Orthodox
Church) established by this law became the authoritative voice of the Church in
matters of doctrine and politics throughout the twentieth century.17
Orthodox military chaplains were first introduced by Cuza in 1860, and
by 1870 every regiment had its own priest. In 1877 priests were replaced by
chaplains permanently attached to specific garrisons and required to accompany
soldiers during their campaigns.18 The ROC threw its support behind the
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Neofit Scriban, Apologia Prea Sfinţitului Arhiereŭ D. D. Neofit Scriban, faţă cu clevetitori Sĕĭ din Iaşǐ
şi Bucureşti: Saŭ respunsŭ acelora ce fac Apoteosa nenorocituluĭ de dînşiǐ Cuza-vodă, pentru falşa
independinţă a Bisericeĭ Române (Bucharest: Theodorescu, 1867), 9.
Leustean, ‘Political Control of Orthodoxy’, 65–7.
‘Constituţie din 1 iunie 1866’, Monitorul oficial, 1 June 1866, Article 21.
‘Legea sinodală (December 1872)’. Reproduced in Brusanowski, Stat şi Biserică, 257–60.
Leustean, ‘Political Control of Orthodoxy’, 70.
‘Regulament pentru disciplina bisericească (1873)’. Reproduced in Brusanowski, Stat şi Biserică,
267–72.
Alexandru Stănciulescu-Bârda, Bibliografia revistei ‘Biserica Ortodoxă Română’ (1874–1994) (Bârda:
Editura Cuget Românesc, 2000).
Ursul, ‘From Political Freedom to Religious Independence’, 222.
A Contested Patriarchate
55
Romanian campaign in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and was rewarded when
the ecumenical patriarch recognized it as an autocephalous church in 1885.19
The declaration of autocephaly represented international acknowledgement
of the country’s new status as a kingdom (rather than a principality) and
followed the Romanians’s own symbolic declaration of independence three
years earlier when they celebrated the Holy Chrism themselves rather than
receiving it from the ecumenical patriarch.20 Autocephaly did little to improve
the Church’s finances, though, and parish priests struggled to survive only on
voluntary contributions from their parishioners. According to a report drawn
up by Partenic, the Bishop of Dunării de Jos, ‘the Church and our clergy have
been left to fate and forced to live off offerings and Christian pity. Poverty and
destitution have overwhelmed the Church and hit the family of the priest most
heavily, impacting their religion and Christian morals as well as their prestige
and honour’.21 In 1893 a new law addressed the ROC’s financial crisis while
bringing it further under state control. Priests now received a monthly state
salary of between 50 and 200 lei, depending on their education and whether the
parish was urban or rural. The same law restricted the number of urban parishes
to 368 and the number of rural parishes to 3,326. New parishes could only be
established by royal decree. Priests had to be ethnic Romanians with advanced
degrees from Orthodox institutions.22 When the metropolitan-primate objected
to the level of state control introduced by this law, he was dismissed.23 The
decision to make parish priests into state employees reflected a firm conviction
among politicians that church and state were now inseparable and that the
church deserved state funding.24 Another law in 1902 placed the administration
of church property under the control of newly formed ‘Church Houses’ which
reported directly to the Minister of Denominations.25 This was followed in 1909
by a law which further regulated how bishops were elected, once again ensuring
secular control over church appointments.26
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Isar, Biserică-stat-societate, 226–41.
Leustean, ‘Political Control of Orthodoxy’, 71.
Petru Gârboviceanu, Biserica Ortodoxă şi cultele străine din regatul român (Bucharest: Institutul de
Arte Grafice, 1904), l.
‘Legii clerului mirean şi a Seminariilor (1893)’. Reproduced in Brusanowski, Stat şi Biserică, 273–9.
Leustean, ‘Political Control of Orthodoxy’, 74.
Miron Cristea, ‘Biserica Ortodoxă din România şi anteproiectul Domnului Ministru S. Haret
referitor la reforma sinodală’, Ţara noastră, 15–28 February 1909, 1.
‘Lege pentru înfiinţarea şi organizarea Casei Sfintei Biserici Autocefale Ortodoxe Române (1902)’.
Brusanowski, Stat şi Biserică, 294–6.
Isar, Biserică-stat-societate, 271–328.
56
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
With the exception of Greece, no other Orthodox church experienced the
level of subordination to the state that existed in Romania.27 Contemporary
observers such as Nicolae Iorga argued that the Church had entered a period of
‘decadence’ from the moment it was subordinated to the new nation-state. ‘From
1860 until the turn of the century’, he claimed, ‘our church has been in a period
of continual decline because it was not left to fulfil its ecclesiastic functions
but was interfered with by the state’.28 Church leaders felt that they had been
short-changed by the government despite having done everything possible to
accommodate the state and to support the cause of Romanian nationalism. A
parish priest by the name of Sebastian Pârvulescu typified this feeling when he
argued that ‘the Church cannot be accused of any wrong-doing in our national
past. … The representatives of the Church have been permanently submitted
and obedient to the rulers of this world whenever those rulers served the popular
good’. Nonetheless, Pârvulescu was proud of Orthodoxy’s position as the ‘state
church’. It was, he said, ‘a just recognition’ of Orthodoxy’s role in ‘raising and
nourishing our people like a small child’ until Romania was ready to become a
nation-state.29
The problems facing the Church at the beginning of the twentieth century
can be seen by counting its priests. Whereas there were 9,702 priests in the Old
Kingdom in 1859, by 1904 this number had dropped to 4,998.30 Nor were all
of them particularly capable, with many too old to do their jobs but lacking
pensions that would allow them to retire. More than ten years after the law
required all new priests to have completed higher education, still only 8 per cent
of parish priests were properly qualified.31 Older priests further complained that
introducing diplomas as the primary requirement for the priesthood meant that
the Church was attracting individuals who were spiritually unprepared for their
role and had only joined the Church for material gain.32 The declining number
of priests was particularly obvious because churches were now standing empty.
Of the 6,766 church buildings in Romania in 1913, only 56.3 per cent had a
priest to hold services in them.33 Hopeful that things would change after the
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Brusanowski, Stat şi Biserică, 99–108.
Nicolae Iorga, ‘Discursul rostit în Adunarea Deputaţilor la 23 martie 1909’, quoted in ibid., 142.
Sebastian Pârvulescu, Biserica noastră naţională în raport cu celelalte confesiuni (Vălenii de Munte:
Tipografia Neamul Românesc, 1911), 34, 39.
Lucian N. Leustean, Orthodoxy in the Cold War: Religion and Political Power in Romania, 1947–65
(Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 34.
Gârboviceanu, Biserica ortodoxa şi cultele straine, li.
Un preot de mir, Chestiuni de discutat (Piteşti: Tipografia Transilvania, 1909).
Brusanowski, Stat şi Biserică, 244.
A Contested Patriarchate
57
First World War, in 1919 the Church asked that the state support its mission,
guarantee that the ROC could keep its property and autonomy, provide
material and moral support for the education of priests, establish it as a core
cultural institution, protect it from political interference and support Orthodox
confessional schools.34 In the words of Bishop Ghenadie Niculescu of Buzău, the
vision of the Church in the Old Kingdom was of a ‘Romanian people’, living in a
‘standardized state’ with ‘one church’.35
The Orthodox Church in Transylvania, Bukovina, Bessarabia
and the Banat
Other Orthodox churches ministering to Romanian speakers had quite different
histories. Transylvania was incorporated into the Habsburg Empire in 1683
following the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Vienna, profiting from internal
squabbles among the nobility and a strategy of compromises designed to win
over the Hungarian nobility.36 Although Transylvanians were predominantly
Calvinist or Orthodox, the Habsburgs relied on Catholicism to unite their empire.
Following several years of negotiations, in 1698 Emperor Leopold I persuaded
Metropolitan Atanasie to form the Greek Catholic, or Uniate Church. Greek
Catholic priests were to receive the same constitutional status as their Catholic
and Protestant counterparts, in return for which they had to recognize the Pope
as the head of the Church, use unleavened bread for the Eucharist, acknowledge
the existence of purgatory and accept the ‘Filioque’ clause of the Nicean Creed
which stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son.37
Not all Orthodox priests agreed with the emperor’s proposal, and Transylvania
found itself with two very similar churches, only one of which had imperial
support. Whereas a clerical elite enjoyed the benefits brought by the Union with
Rome, the majority of Romanians clung to Orthodoxy. The Emperor insisted
that Transylvanian Romanians now had their own church – a Greek Orthodox
one – so he refused to appoint an Orthodox bishop from 1700 until 1761. As
Keith Hitchins argues, the discovery that their clergy had changed their religion
hit Romanian peasants particularly hard because priests were responsible
34
35
36
37
Maner, Multikonfessionalität, 61.
Ibid., 75.
R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979),
235–72.
Ibid., 419–24.
58
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
for policing the very practices and rituals which bound them together as a
community and differentiated them from ‘outsiders’ such as the Habsburgs.
When the ‘betrayal’ became known, peasants responded with violence. Two of
the three peasant rebellions in Transylvania during the eighteenth century were
led by monks. The first was triggered by the preaching of a monk from Serbia
named Visarion Sarai, whose popularity demonstrated widespread support for
Orthodoxy against the Greek Catholic Church. Peasants told imperial officials
sent to investigate that they had not known that their priests had converted
to Greek Catholicism and they resented it deeply.38 One old man from Sibiu
reportedly said,
This coat, which I have on, is mine. But if the empress wished to take it from
me, I would give it gladly. I have worked day and night with these old arms and
legs and with my whole body to pay the tithe. They belong to the empress, and if
she wished to take them from me, I could do nothing. But I have only one soul,
which I am keeping for God in heaven, and no earthly power may bend it.39
The Empress Maria Theresa reorganized Transylvanian Orthodoxy in 1779
through a law known as the Rescriptu declaratoriu. She placed the Church
firmly under state control, limited the number of priests allowed in each region,
demanded higher education for all clergy and introduced lay participation in
church governance.40 These reforms also gave bishops greater independence
from their metropolitans, which turned out to be a blessing for Romanian
nationalists when Emperor Joseph II subordinated the Orthodox Church in
Transylvania to the Metropolitanate of Karlowitz in 1783. The rise of modern
nationalism increasingly encouraged the Karlowitz metropolitanate to see itself
as a vehicle for Serbian national interests, even if secular Serbian nationalists still
believed that the church was too closely allied with the emperor to be an effective
advocate for their cause.41 The first two Orthodox bishops of Transylvania under
the new system were Serbian, and the first Romanian to hold the position was
Vasile Moga, who was appointed in 1810 after the office had been vacant for
fourteen years. Moga worked steadily to represent Romanian interests to the
38
39
40
41
Keith Hitchins, ‘Religion and Rumanian National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century
Transylvania’, The Slavonic and East European Review 57, no. 2 (1979), 234.
Quoted in ibid., 229.
Nicolae Bocşan, ‘Nation et confession en Transylvanie au XIXe siècle. Le cas de la Métropolie
roumaine’, in Ethnie et confession en Transylvanie (du XIIIe au XIXe siècles), ed. Nicolae Bocşan, Ioan
Lumperdean and Ioan-Aurel Pop (Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Studii Transilvane, Fundaţia Culturală
Română, 1996), 103–4.
Aleksov, Religious Dissent, 37–41.
A Contested Patriarchate
59
emperor. He encouraged his priests to preach regular sermons and to build
schools and churches. A chronic lack of money hindered his efforts, which were
redoubled by his successor, Andrei Şaguna.
Romanians had no constitutional status within the empire and Habsburg law
stated that only the Orthodox and Greek-Catholic bishops could represent them
before the emperor. As the spokespeople for the Romanian people, Şaguna as the
Orthodox bishop, and his Greek Catholic counterpart, Archbishop Alexandru
Şterca Şuluţiu, found themselves catapulted to the forefront of the Romanian
national movement when revolution broke out in 1848. Şaguna distinguished
himself as a talented politician and a tenacious advocate for the Romanian
cause despite constant tensions with the lay intellectuals who chafed at having a
bishop at the head of what they thought should have been a secular movement.
Şaguna consistently argued in favour of a Romanian alliance with the emperor
against Hungarian ambitions, a conservative stance that won him few friends
inside the national movement and ultimately failed when the court in Vienna
abandoned the Romanians in order to compromise with the Hungarians. His
efforts to promote Romanian interests nonetheless encouraged many to view
the Orthodox Church as a core part of the national movement and of Romanian
national identity.42
Şaguna also fought to improve the reputation of his Church. He wrote to
his superior that ‘our Church is completely disorganized and drags everyone
down with it because the priests (and even more the protopopes) are completely
blinded by personal interests’.43 As bishop he increased the education levels
of his parish priests, reorganized the seminary at Sibiu and established a
church newspaper known as Telegraful român (The Romanian Telegraph). Lay
involvement became a central pillar of the Transylvanian church following the
Organic Statute of the Romanian Orthodox Church of Transylvania of 1868,
which built on the Rescriptu declaratoriu by enshrining synods as the core
feature of church government. Synods were introduced at every level of the
church hierarchy, and a third of their members were clergy while two-thirds
42
43
Keith Hitchins, Orthodoxy and Nationality: Andreiu Şaguna and the Rumanians of Transylvania,
1846–1873 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); Johann Schneider, Der
Hermannstädter Metropolit Andrei von Şaguna: Reform und Erneuerung der orthodoxen Kirche in
Siebenbürgen und Ungarn nach 1848 (Köln: Böhlau, 2005), 34–114.
Andreiu Şaguna to Joseph Rajačić, quoted in Rumänisch-orthodoxe Kirchenordnungen 1786–2008:
Siebenbürgen— Bukowina—Rumänien, ed. Paul Brusanowski, Ulrich A. Wien and Karl W. Schwarz
(Köln: Böhlau, 2011), 19.
60
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
were laymen.44 This model continued to evolve over the following decades. It
ensured that parish priests had a viable income and placed the administration
of local churches under parish committees and synods which were required
to keep detailed financial accounts. A strong believer in the importance of lay
participation in the church, Şaguna also oversaw the printing of an updated
Romanian translation of the Bible and encouraged the British and Foreign Bible
Society to distribute literature within Transylvania.45 The church he left behind
upon his death in 1873 was one that placed great importance on the education
of priests, which had its own distinctive voice in public affairs, and which was
proudly associated with the Romanian national movement.
When Liviu Stan articulated a theology of lay Christianity in 1939 he evoked
a tradition of lay leadership in the Transylvanian Orthodox Church dating back
to the late 1860s, in which laypeople made up two-thirds of every ecclesiastic
administrative body.46 The Metropolitan Andrei Şaguna had intended lay
involvement in the Church as a way of providing political representation to
the otherwise disenfranchised Transylvanian Romanians, and Ionuţ Biliuţă
argues that Şaguna’s reforms represented the beginning ‘of a consciously
shaped nationalistic “political Orthodoxy” in order to mobilize the Orthodox
intellectuals and clergymen around the same nationalist ideas’.47 Stan was an
active member of the Legion of the Archangel Michael during the 1930s, and he
explicitly drew on both Şaguna’s heritage and the example of Catholic Action as
the inspirations for involving laypeople in a politicized, nationalist approach to
Orthodoxy in a way that resonated with Vartolomeu Stănescu’s version of Social
Christianity.48
Şaguna campaigned for several decades to establish Transylvania as a separate
metropolitanate independent of Serbian control and finally achieved his goal
in 1864, also incorporating two related dioceses – one in Arad and the other
in Caransebeş.49 The bishopric of Bukovina followed suit in 1873, becoming
44
45
46
47
48
49
‘Verfassung der Griechisch-Orientalisch-Romanischen Kirche (1868)’, in Rumänisch-orthodoxe
Kirchenordnungen, ed. Brusanowski, Wien, and Schwarz, 40–97.
Schneider, Der Hermannstädter Metropolit, 115–41.
Schneider, Der Hermannstädter Metropolit Andrei von Şaguna, 200–4; Paul Brusanowski, Reforma
constituţională din Biserica Ortodoxă a Transylvaniei între 1850–1925 (Cluj-Napoca: Presa
Universitară Clujeană, 2007), 15–34, 194–207.
Ionuţ Biliuţă, ‘Rejuvenating Orthodox Missionarism among the Laymen: The Romanian Orthodox
Fellowship in Transylvania’, Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai. Theologia Orthodoxa 62, no. 2
(2017): 24.
Ibid., 21–38.
Andreea Dăncilă-Ineoan, Marius Eppel and Ovidiu-Emil Iudean, Voices of the Churches, Voices of
the Nationalities: Competing Loyalties in the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament (1867–1918)
(Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019), 78–9.
A Contested Patriarchate
61
its own metropolitanate with its seat in (Austrian) Czernowitz despite Şaguna’s
insistence that it should have been incorporated into (Hungarian) Transylvania.
The Habsburgs had formally annexed Bukovina in 1775 and introduced an
Episcopal Council in 1786 to oversee church matters.50 The Episcopal Council
was reorganized in 1869, after Bukovina became part of Cisleithania, the
Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Whereas the Transyvlanian
church was heavily shaped by lay governance and enjoyed a relative degree
of autonomy, the Metropolitanate of Bukovina was under the direct control
of the bishop, and above him the emperor, without significant input from
protopopes, parish priests, or lay people.51 A protest meeting of 2,000 leading
Romanians in 1870 demanded that the government stop using Romanian taxes
to subsidize other churches, stop postponing the Church Congress and allow
lay Christians to elect their own bishops. Their requests were opposed by the
Bishop of Bukovina, Eugenie Hacman, who disapproved of democratizing
the Church, and the emperor used Hacman’s opposition as an excuse for even
listening to the demands of the Romanian delegation when it tried to present
its demands.52 Hacman was rewarded for his loyalty to the empire by becoming
the first metropolitan of Bukovina three years later. Bukovinian Orthodoxy
also included large number of ethnic Ruthenians. Moga and Şaguna had seen
the Church as a vehicle for Romanian national ambitions because almost all
Orthodox Christians in Transylvania were ethnic Romanians, but the multiethnic character of Bukovina meant that the national movements there took on
a more secular character.53
Ethnic Romanians in Bessarabia mostly worshipped within the Russian
Orthodox Church after Tsar Alexander I annexed the region in 1812, and its
hierarchy was dominated by Russians until the late nineteenth century. It,
too, was effectively a branch of the state, with parishes functioning as state
administrative units, and lay people being expected to attend church without
involving themselves in its business in other ways.54 The Russians in Bessarabia
did allow some Romanian features to continue and provided the Bessarabian
church with its own administrative structure. The archbishop’s word was law,
however, and when he carried out a series of ecclesiastical reforms in 1872,
50
51
52
53
54
Rumänisch-orthodoxe Kirchenordnungen, ed. Brusanowski, Wien and Scharzet, 208–59.
Ibid., 197, 260–77; Maner, Multikonfessionalität, 44.
Paul Brusanowski, Autonomia şi constituţionalismul în dezbaterile privind unificarea Bisericii
Ortodoxe Române (1919–1925) (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2007), 43.
Maner, Multikonfessionalität, 45.
Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution, 16–27.
62
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Archbishop Pavel Lebedev explained to the congress that it was ‘obliged to
implment my proposals precisely’.55
Romanians increasingly received more freedom to worship in their own
language towards the end of the nineteenth century. In 1900 the Orthodox
Missionary Brotherhood of the Lord’s Birth, established by Bishop Iacob
Piatniţki of Chişinău and Hotin, began distributing religious brochures and
pamphlets in Romanian, which helped cultivate Romanian national identity
as much as it did souls. Piatniţki’s successor Vladimir introduced Romanian as
the language of instruction at the seminary in Chişinău. Nonetheless, Orthodox
priests still complained that limited access to religious services in Romanian was
encouraging people to turn to Inochentism and Repenter Christianity.56 The
Russian revolution of 1905 helped spread democratic and national ideas within
the Bessarabian church, which became increasingly decentralized, with parish
priests playing a greater role in its governance than they ever had before. Change
was slow, however, and when Gurie Grosu began advocating for the Romanian
national movement by establishing a printing press and a church newspaper
in Romanian he was sent to a monastery in Smolensk – almost 700 miles
away.57 The legacy of 1905 nonetheless endured and bore fruit in wide-ranging
democratic reforms in 1917. The Russian Sobor of 1917 involved large numbers
of lay people in church governance for the first time. Led by their ethnically
Russian archbishops, most priests in the region did not want their church to join
the ROC in March 1918.58
In Transylvania Şaguna’s immediate successor as metropolitan, Miron
Romanul, struggled against a strong opposition in the Synod led by a vicar named
Nicolae Popea who played a leading role in the Romanian National Committee.
Romanul responded to attempts by the Romanian National Committee to use
the Church for its own ends by establishing the more moderate Romanian
Constitutional Party and by staunchly defending the Church’s autonomy from the
national movement. A stalemate developed with Popea’s supporters controlling
the Synod and the Archdiocesan Council, and the metropolitan dragging his
feet to implement their decisions.59 Romanul was replaced by Ion Meţianu in
1899, who demanded sweeping reforms of the church administration and used
a heavy hand to ensure professionalism among the clergy.
55
56
57
58
59
Quoted in Brusanowski, Autonomia şi constituţionalismul, 63.
Vasile Pocitan, Biserica românească din Basarabia (Bucharest: Tipografia Albert Baer, 1914).
Brusanowski, Autonomia şi constituţionalismul, 71.
Veronica Boldişor, File din viaţa unei biserici şi a unui mitropolit (Chişinău: Pontos, 2014), 38.
Hitchins, Orthodoxy and Nationality, 232–7.
A Contested Patriarchate
63
In addition to the demands of the Romanian national movement, Romanul
and Meţianu had to deal with repeated attempts by the Hungarian state to control
church affairs. A civil marriage law passed in 1895 moved authority from the
Church to the state. While the Catholic Church was able to mount a vehement
opposition to the legislation, the Orthodox had to repeatedly back down to avoid
accusations of irredentism.60 Orthodox interpolations in Hungarian political
debates were consistently framed in terms of loyalty to the state. In a speech
from 1894, for example, Meţianu opposed a law on the free exercise of religion
on the grounds that
Not all the citizens of the homeland live in well regulated conditions, not all
of them are blessed, grateful and thankful. There are citizens, maybe even the
majority of citizens, who are unhappy with their fate, who are poor, and needful
and embittered, people who are heavily tried and who no longer know where to
seek help and relief, and thus they seek the empathy of the Church, they appeal
with faith to the mercy of God, faith which alone is capable of encouraging
people to accept their own mortal fate.61
Only the Church, Meţianu suggested, had the moral authority to keep
Romanians loyal to the Hungarian state, so the government would do well to
agree to its demands. Despite the Transylvanian clergy being better educated
and better organized than their counterparts in Romania, low salaries made the
priesthood an uninviting career choice and many parishes found themselves
without priests.62 The Hungarian state began paying Orthodox clergy a regular
stipend from 1898 onwards, but administered these salaries in ways that many
priests considered discriminatory and unfair, including reserving the right to
deny salaries to priests suspected of promoting Romanian nationalism.63 ‘While
the government offers a small financial allowance with one hand’, Meţianu
noted, ‘with the other hand it claims for itself the right of great interferences into
the autonomy of the confessions’.64
60
61
62
63
64
Dăncilă-Ineoan, Eppel, and Iudean, Voices of the Churches, 91–106.
Ioan Mețianu at the House of Magnates assembly meeting, 3 October 1894, quoted in ibid., 125.
Brusanowski, Reforma constituţională, 15–34, 194–207.
Mircea Păcurariu, The Policy of the Hungarian State Concerning the Romanian Church in
Transylvania Under the Dual Monarchy 1867–1918 (Bucharest: Bible and Mission Institute of the
Romanian Orthodox Church, 1986), 82–8; Keith Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed: The Romanian
National Movement in Transylvania 1860/1914 (Bucharest: The Encyclopaedic Publishing House,
1999), 186–9.
Ioan Mețianu at the House of Magnates assembly meeting, 7 June 1898, quoted in Dăncilă-Ineoan
et al., Voices of the Churches, 135.
64
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Dissatisfaction about the Orthodox Church’s treatment by the state also
extended to confessional schooling. Whereas most schools in Transylvania had
been run by churches in Şaguna’s day, three reforms between 1876 and 1907
demanded higher qualifications for teachers and introduced Magyar language
and literature as core subjects in all schools. They brought ever-increasing
state control over Church schools with them. More than half of the Romanian
Orthodox schools closed in the wake of the 1907 reforms because they were
unable to sustain themselves without government funding and the Hungarian
government would not pay for schools that did not teach Hungarian.65 Romanian
demands for greater autonomy were tightly policed during the late nineteenth
century and priests were among those tried and imprisoned for engaging in
‘anti-state’ propaganda.66 Their trials and tribulations bolstered popular support
for the Church, which thus became strongly associated with the national cause.
Nation-building in Greater Romania
Ion Meţianu died in January 1916, shortly before Romania entered the First
World War as an enemy of Austria-Hungary. He was succeeded by Vasile Mangra,
who distinguished himself during his two years as metropolitan by collaborating
closely with the Hungarian government. Metropolitan Vasile Mangra was on
his deathbed when the war ended in November 1918. The National Romanian
Central Council, which represented Transylvania’s Romanians at this time,
included the Bishop of Arad, Ioan I. Pop, the Bishop of Caransebeş, Miron
Cristea, and the Greek Catholic Bishop Iuliu Hossu. The Council called for a
National Assembly and Cristea was among those who presented the Resolution
of the Assembly to King Ferdinand I, incorporating Transylvania into Romania
on 1 December 1918.67 In a prayer during the ceremony at Alba Iulia, he prayed:
Lord our God. You are our Father. You saw the distress of our parents and you
heard their cries, for they had become as flowers covered in frost – their souls
bent waiting to be crushed and their bodies pressed against the earth. You have
fulfilled among us that which you promised in ages past: I will break your yoke
and I will burst your bonds, I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you
65
66
67
Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed, 197–220; Paul Brusanowski, Învăţământul confesional ortodox din
Transilvania între anii 1848–1918: Între exigenţele statului centralizat şi principiile autonomieie
bisericeşti (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2005).
Păcurariu, The Policy of the Hungarian State, 88–212.
Constantin I. Stan, Patriarhul Miron Cristea: o viață, un destin (Bucharest: Editura Paideia, 2009),
145–72; Petcu, Guvernarea Miron Cristea, 124–131.
A Contested Patriarchate
65
out of the countries where you have been scattered. I will restore your judges as
at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Yes Lord, you who loose
those bound with fetters and raise up those who are cast down, with your help
we have won the war with rejoicing and driven out the children of insolence.
You have saved us, your people, and the salvation of our God is seen to the ends
of the earth.68
Cristea saw Romanians as God’s chosen people, to whom all of the promises
made to the people of Israel now applied.69 He believed that they were oppressed
and that the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a divine judgement.
As he reminded his listeners, ‘the way of sinners is paved with smooth stones,
but at its end is the pit of Hades’.70 He outlined an expansive vision that involved
the extension of Romanian territory as far as Romanian speakers could be
found: ‘Remind us Lord of our brothers [still] in slavery, show them mercy
and give them compassion for those who enslaved them.’ Romanian control of
Transylvania was not internationally recognized at this time, and the country
was still waiting anxiously to learn how its claims to the Banat, Crişana, Bukovina
and Bessarabia would be received at the peace conferences. The implication
that Romanians had now come into possession of their Promised Land caused
Cristea to pray that God might ‘make straight our paths and our actions that we
might live in this land’. We shall never know whether he had in mind the other
injunction to given to the people of Israel when they entered Canaan – ‘as for the
towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance,
you must not let anything that breathes remain alive’ (Deuteronomy 20:16) –
but over the next twenty years Cristea pursued a consistent policy of denying
rights to any who were not Romanian Orthodox and at the end of his life he
presided over the initial stages of the destruction of Romanian Jewry.71
Appointed metropolitan-primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church in
February 1920, Cristea threw his support behind the state’s nation-building
projects. Inflation was a major problem after the war and the government issued
bonds in 1920 to help rebuild infrastructure destroyed by the war.72 Cristea
68
69
70
71
72
Quoted in Stan, Patriarhul Miron Cristea, 155.
In addition to numerous Biblical allusions, Cristea here quoted directly from Isaiah 1:26, Jeremiah
2:20 and Ezekiel 11:17.
Here Cristea was quoting from Sirach 21:10.
Ion Popa, ‘Miron Cristea, the Romanian Orthodox Patriarch: His Political and Religious Influence
in Deciding the Fate of the Romanian Jews (February 1938–March 1939)’, Yad Vashem Studies 40,
no. 2 (2012): 11–34.
Bogdan Murgescu, România şi Europa: Acumularea decalajelor economice (1500–2010) (Iaşi:
Polirom, 2010), 223.
66
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
ordered that ‘it is the duty of all Very Reverend Deans and Priests and all church
organs to carry out the most extensive patriotic propaganda in support of this
loan’.73 State- and nation-building took pride of place in Cristea’s writings during
this period. He instructed priests to
use every opportunity to awaken and develop healthy thinking in the minds of
the people about communal obligations and citizenship. [To] make the pastorate
into an element of order, submission, love for country and throne, a force for the
cultivation of the soil, for the exercising of trades, ready to give to the country
all the tributes and sacrifices necessary for ensuring its existence and continual
progress.74
Worried about the spread of communism, he issued circulars calling on people
to support the government and not to listen to those ‘false prophets’ who had
already brought revolution to Russia.75 The state took full advantage of the
Church’s support and asked priests to teach their parishioners to stop stealing
telephone wires and vandalizing the electrical boxes ‘because it is costing the
state a lot of money’.76
As Irina Livezeanu has shown, the process of integrating the new provinces
involved standardizing and centralizing state administration, imposing the
norms and values of the Old Kingdom on to the new provinces, each of which
had its own traditions and functionaries.77 The government turned to Orthodox
priests as potential agents in the state’s centralization efforts. The Church
responded enthusiastically, offering a ‘cultural programme’ and promising to
collaborate closely with teachers in promoting official policies.78 One article
from Biserica şi şcoala (Church and School) argued that ‘without its cultural
mission, the Romanian Orthodox Church, like many of the Oriental churches,
becomes a contemplative, purely dogmatic institution eternally involved
in the consecration of its denomination [cult] in the most perfect forms, but
without any connection with real life. But Christ’s church is a living institution,
and Christianity is a real part of the culture.’ 79 Involvement in education also
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
Miron Cristea, ‘Către iubitul cler şi popor din Arhiepiscopia Ungro-Vlahiei’, in ANIC, Fond Miron
Cristea, Dosar 3/1920, f. 11.
Miron Cristea, Circular 642/7 February 1922, in ANIC, Fond Miron Cristea, Dosar 3/1920, f. 67.
Circular 1461/1920, in ANIC, Fond Miron Cristea, Dosar 3/1920, ff. 12–15.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 2/1921, f. 52.
Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic
Struggle, 1918–1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).
Letter, Consistorul Eparhial Ortodox, Cluj, to the Minister of Education, 22 August 1922, ANIC,
Fond Ministerul Instrucţiunii, Dosar 29/1922, f. 60.
‘Şcoala confesională’, Biserica şi şcoala, 1919, 1.
A Contested Patriarchate
67
allowed the ROC to influence what was being taught in schools. In an address
to the Romanian Orthodox Society in 1911, the renowned geographer Simion
Mehedinţi had argued that the Church must be given control of public education
lest young people believe that science and religion were incompatible.80 In 1922
the archdiocese of Alba-Iulia and Sibiu published a circular instructing ‘all
teachers of every specialty to work harmoniously and consistently to develop
theist ideas – Christian and Orthodox – in students’. ‘Religion’, they explained,
‘should be the primary focus of all education’.81
Standardizing education was particularly difficult in the new territories, and
state-building was simultaneously a nationalizing process aimed at imposing the
culture of the Old Kingdom on ethnic minority populations.82 Teachers from
minority groups in Bukovina who had taught under the Austro-Hungarian
system, for example, found it hard to adapt to Romanian requirements,
sometimes refusing to celebrate Romanian commemorations for war heroes or
Orthodox religious holidays when both they and their students were Roman
Catholics who had fought against Romania during the war.83 Ethnicity was not
always clear-cut. Slovak students attended Polish schools and German students
attended Hungarian schools depending on which had been more easily available
under the Austro-Hungarians. The state was quick to reduce teaching staff as
soon as the number of students at any given minority school dropped.84 School
inspectors from the Old Kingdom found much to criticize in schools from the
provinces. A school inspector in Târnava Mare county reported in 1922 that
‘Romanian education is as bad as possible. The old oppressive spirit dominates
the atmosphere.’ He recommended that ‘to bring the new current of spiritual
regeneration into these schools, to bring new ideas of education and teaching
we will need new people, young and well-qualified teachers’.85 The Ministry of
Education agreed, sending both books and personnel to the provinces to replace
existing staff.86
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
Simion Mehedinţi, Pentru biserica noastră (Bucharest: Tipografia Gutenberg, 1911).
ANIC, Fond Ministerul Instrucţiunii, Dosar 310/1923, ff. 207–9.
Mariana Hausleitner, Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina: Die Durchsetzung des nationalstaatlichen
Anspruchs Grossrumäniens 1918–1944 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2001), 12, 344.
Report, Directoratul General pentru Bucovina to the Minister of Education, Cernăuţi, 26 December
1922, ANIC, Fond Ministerul Instrucţiunii, Dosar 310/1923, ff. 4–6.
ANIC, Fond Ministerul Instrucţiunii, Dosar 310/1923, ff. 4–6, 33–7.
Report, Revizor Şcolar to the Minister of Education, August 1922, ANIC, Fond Ministerul
Instrucţiunii, Dosar 29/1922, ff. 61–2.
Livezeanu, Cultural Politics, 35–48; Alberto Basciani, La Difficile Unione: La Bessarabia e La Grande
Romania, 1918–1940 (Rome: Aracne, 2007), 166–7.
68
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Seminaries were just as susceptible to regional chauvinism as primary
schools. When the University Senate in Iaşi approved the application for a new
theological faculty in Chişinău, for example, it noted that ‘Bessarabia needs
a superior cultural institute which is not to be only a centre for theoretical
learning but also a place which radiates Romanian culture to the great masses
of Moldavian people beyond the Prut River’.87 The hiring committee argued that
no one currently teaching in Bessarabia was sufficiently qualified and insisted
that the new professors be ‘elements of national propaganda’.88 At the same time,
however, the ROC was willing to bend the rules about qualifications when it
came to other provinces. When it was discovered that most priests in Dobruja
were ethnic Bulgarians they passed a special law dropping the qualification
requirements for any Romanian priests willing to move there.89
Part of the ROC’s willingness to concede the closure of confessional schools
despite strong opposition from Nicolae Bălan can be attributed to Cristea’s close
relationship with the National Liberal Party. Most of the prominent Romanian
politicians from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire organized themselves
into the Romanian National Party after the war, establishing themselves as
the representatives of Transylvania in Greater Romania. In 1919 they entered
into an alliance with Ion Mihalache’s Peasant Party to form a government, thus
breaking the National Liberals’ long-standing monopoly on power. The shaky
alliance held sporadically until 1926 when the two parties officially merged.90
Transylvanian politicians thus placed themselves in clear opposition to the
established political elite from the Old Kingdom, represented by the National
Liberal Party. Confident that Cristea would support their cause, they requested
his presence in the Senate whenever an important vote was about to take place.91
The relationship did not last long. Cristea attracted the ire of his old supporters
when he formed a close working relationship with the Liberal Prime Minister
Ionel Brătianu in 1921 with the intention, he said, of helping the Liberals gain
support in Transylvania.92
Over the next few years the government consistently appointed hierarchs with
Liberal sympathies and who were embedded in Liberal patronage networks.93
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
Meeting of the University Senate of Iaşi, 10 October 1926, ANIC – Iaşi, Fond Universitatea
A. I. Cuza, Rectoratul, Dosar 1122/1926, f. 37.
Ibid., f. 27.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 9/1924, f. 13, and Dosar 109/1925, ff. 115–16.
Keith Hitchins, Rumania, 1866–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 386–95.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 2/1921, f. 63v.
Miron Cristea, Note ascunse: Însemnări personale (1895–1937) (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Dacia, 1999), 55.
Ibid., 147.
A Contested Patriarchate
69
The National Peasantists, in turn, came to be seen as a party affiliated with the
Greek Catholic Church.94 Angry at what he saw as Cristea’s betrayal, his former
patron Octavian Goga turned against him, writing that Cristea
lacked first and foremost a clear religious belief. In every one of his roles his
life betrayed not only a complete absence of any thirst for God, but also an
incontestable frivolity that is profoundly disagreeable. He lacks any serious
cultural orientation which might have allowed him to cover up his moral failings
through intellectual aptitude. His only saving graces were a good-looking
appearance and an undeniable aptitude as a provincial orator.95
Brătianu’s patronage nonetheless paid dividends. When Cristea moved into
the metropolitan’s residence he found it dirty and dilapidated, so he donated
the building to the Society for the Graves of War Heroes and convinced the
government to build him a new official residence.96
Regional tensions and a new patriarchate
The ROC now had to incorporate the other Orthodox churches from the
new provinces, each with its own customs, traditions and laws, into a central
administration.97 The challenge, as Valer Moldovan pointed out in 1921, was
that
the Metropolitanate of Ardeal as it is organized today under Şaguna’s Organic
Statutes, is an example of the more advanced autonomous and constitutional
organizations, while the Church of the Old Kingdom is a model of a state church
[o biserica etatizată], of a church subjugated to the state, completely lacking any
sort of constitutional organization in a democratic and representative sense.
The Church in Bukovina was ‘a state church … subordinated to a foreign state
power’, and in Bessarabia the Church was ‘under foreign control as a nation
and country but of the same Orthodox laws’.98 As a Transylvanian, Moldovan’s
94
95
96
97
98
Maner, Multikonfessionalität, 106, 121.
Octavian Goga, ‘Insemnări zilnice. Jurnal politic, 31 March 1931’, quoted in Gheorghe I. Bodea,
‘Cuvânt înainte’, in Elie Miron Cristea, Note ascunse: Însemnări personale (1895–1937) (Cluj-Napoca:
Editura Dacia, 1999), 23.
Cristea, Note ascunse, 84–5.
Proiect de Statut Organic pentru organizarea Bisericii Autocefale Ortodoxe Române (Bucharest:
Tipografia Cărţilor Bisericeşti, 1921) in ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 2/1921, ff. 81–106.
Valer Moldovan, Biserica Ortodoxă Română şi problema unificări: Studiu de drept bisericesc (Cluj:
Ardealul Institut de Arte Grafice, 1921), 6, 130, 146.
70
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
solution was that the ROC as a whole adopt the organizational model of the
Transylvanian church.99 Florian Kührer-Wielach has noted that the idea that
the Old Kingdom should follow Transylvanian leadership was widespread
among Transylvanian elites. They believed, he writes, that although ‘national
freedom gave the Old Kingdom the potential for a higher level of cultural
development, this was compensated for by the civilizational head start of the
former Habsburg regions’.100
The government attempted to unilaterally write the unification of the Church
into law in February 1920 but was forced to withdraw the proposal a few days
later in the face of spirited protests from representatives of the new provinces.101
Led by Nicolae Bălan, the Transylvanians had advocated for importing their
ecclesiastical model into the ROC since 1919, and they now elected Bălan
as Metropolitan of Ardeal on a platform of resisting any centralization of
the Church that did not preserve the Transylvanian model.102 In early 1921
the Transylvanian legal expert Lucian Borcia declared that the autonomy the
Church had enjoyed in Austria-Hungary was still legally binding and that
therefore the Romanian state had no legal right to impose a new structure on the
Church. With the support of the Bessarabians, the Transylvanians insisted that
they should maintain their own governmental structures unchanged, effectively
declaring their autonomy to govern themselves within the ROC.103 In Bessarabia
the Church elected its own archbishop in an extraordinary congress that
included both clerical and lay representatives but which did not have the legal
backing of the ROC. The new archbishop, Gurie Grosu, declared that this level
of democracy should characterize the Bessarabian church from this point on.
‘We want to keep these institutions and practices and to introduce them into
Greater Romania as well’, he promised.104 Few politicians or church leaders from
the Old Kingdom agreed. They insisted on shaping the entire ROC in their own
image, just as they had the schools, the military and other state institutions.
Miron Cristea explained that the ROC needed a ‘tempered autonomy’ unlike the
more democratic Transylvanian and Bessarabian systems.105 For their part, the
Ibid., 155–6.
Kührer-Wielach, Siebenbürgen ohne Siebenbürger?, 353.
101
Brusanowski, Autonomia şi constituţionalismul, 113–16; Nicolae Bălan, Chestiunea bisericească
din România şi autonomia bisericii noastre (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane, 1910);
Nicolae Bălan, Cuvântări rostite cu ocazia alegerii, sfinţirii şi investiturii (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei
Arhidiecezane, 1921).
102
Brusanowski, Autonomia şi constituţionalismul, 73–92, 117–43.
103
Ibid., 217–55.
104
Ibid., 16–19.
105
Brunsanowski, Reforma constituţională, 287.
99
100
A Contested Patriarchate
71
Bukovinians advocated a slow process of integration that preserved both local
autonomy from the Holy Synod and kept the state from interfering in church
business, but were quite willing for the metropolitan-primate in Bucharest to
dominate church governance.106
After months of tense negotiations, church-state relations were ultimately
defined by the 1923 constitution. Ionel Brătianu appointed Cristea to the
committee that drafted the constitution, along with Vartolomeu Stănescu, the
Bishop of Râmnicului Noului Severin, who was there at Cristea’s request. Stănescu
had been Cristea’s rival for the position of metropolitan-primate in 1919 and
the two men did not always get along, but he was the only Church leader who
openly argued for ‘removing the church from under the administration of the
state’.107 Whereas Church leaders such as Cristea preferred to speak of Tradition
when negotiating Church-state relations, Stănescu was a sociologist by training,
having studied under Émile Durkheim in Paris. Stănescu characterized the state
as an arena for political squabbles, but believed that the Church’s mission was ‘to
lay the foundations of the Kingdom of God in this part of the visible world’. That
involves, he said, ‘refashioning each and every Christian through the power of
faith and the moral purification of his life, building the true faith and the most
sublime virtues in the spiritual man, which involves … self-control and denying
oneself for one’s neighbour’.108 He argued that the Church needed to be free ‘from
the tutelage of a state which, through its natural incompetence in holy things
takes the clergy away from the service of Christ and places them entirely in the
service of moral opportunism and of deviant modern materialism such as party
politics’.109 At the same time, Stănescu thought that an English-style separation
of Church and state was impossible in Romania, where ‘the two are united as in
one being’, such that ‘the state represents the body for the nation, with its organic
needs and strengths, and the Orthodox Church the soul’.110 Although he claimed
to dislike the idea that one church might be ‘privileged’ over others by having its
leaders sit in parliament and being represented at official occasions, he argued
Ibid., 145–58.
Vartolomeu Stănescu, ‘Principiile pe cari va avea să se întemeieze autonomia Bisericii Ortodoxe de
Răsărit în Regatul Român’, Arhiva pentru drept şi politica (1919), reproduced in Stănescu, Puterile
sociale, 220.
108
Vartolomeu Stănescu, ‘Rostul în lume al Bisericii lui Hristos: Cuvântare rostită cu prilejul
Congresului Preoţesc Oltean al Societăţii “Renaşterea” ţinut la Turnu Severin în ziua de 7 Octobrie
1930’, in Vartolomeu Stănescu, În lumina cuvântului (Râmnicu Vâlcea: Editura Sfântul Antim
Ivireanul, 2013), 14.
109
C. ‘În jurul alegerii mitropolitului primat. Convorbire cu P. S. Arhiereul Vartolomeiu Băcăoanul’,
Dacia 2, no. 27 (1920): 1, quoted in Raiu, Democraţie şi statolatrie, 98.
110
Stănescu, ‘Principiile pe cari va avea’, in Stănescu, Puterile sociale, 199.
106
107
72
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
that Orthodoxy was so deeply embedded in the Romanian nation-state that the
dominant status of the ROC was there to stay.111
Miron Cristea, on the other hand, was comfortable with state oversight of
the Church. In a seminal pamphlet from 1920, he argued that ‘the Romanian
Orthodox Church has the duty not only to recognize, but to allow and even
require that the state and the crown have the right to control and oversee all
church administrative affairs in all contexts regardless of their nature and
importance’.112 According to Cristea, his main disagreement with Brătianu over
the constitution was that, whereas the prime minister wanted to say that ‘the
Orthodox Church is the religion of the majority of Romanians’, Cristea insisted
on the phrase ‘the dominant church’. Brătianu then suggested describing both
the Romanian Orthodox and the Greek Catholic Churches as ‘dominant’, but
Cristea replied that to call the Greek Catholic Church a national church was
impossible so long as they acknowledged a foreigner, the Pope, as their head.
The ROC also asked to be allowed to regulate its own activities and administer
its own businesses, cultural activities and foundations just as the other major
churches in the country did. Brătianu objected that this would mean ‘autonomy’,
and pointed out that Archbishop Gurie Grosu had been allowing his priests
to speak Russian and had been using Church funds inappropriately.113 Cristea
promised that he would discipline his subordinates properly, and with these
promises the ROC was given more autonomy in its own administration.114
Article 22 of the Constitution read:
Freedom of conscience is absolute. The state guarantees this freedom and
protection to all denominations so long as its exercise does not affect public
order, good behaviour, and the laws of the state. The Christian Orthodox and
Greek Catholic Churches are Romanian churches. The Romanian Orthodox
Church, being the religion of the great majority of Romanians, is the dominant
church in the Romanian state; and the Greek Catholic Church has primacy over
other denominations. The Orthodox Church is and remains autonomous of any
Raiu, Democraţie şi statolatrie, 300–24.
Miron Cristea, Principii fundamentale pentru organizarea unitară a BOR din regatul român (1920),
quoted in Brusanowski, Autonomia şi constituţionalismul, 102.
113
Grosu was actually an ardent Romanian nationalist and 97 per cent of priests in the episcopate
were Romanian speakers, but Bessarabian churches had maintained elements of the Russian liturgy
because of their musical appeal to the population. Anuarul Episcopiei Chişinăului şi Hotinului
(Basarabia) (n.p.: n.p., 1922), iv; Simion Moraru, ‘Organizarea slujbelor şi a cîntării bisericeşti în
timpul Mitropolitului Gurie al Basarabiei’, in Mitropolitul Gurie: Misiunea de credinţă şi cultură, ed.
Silvia Grossu (Chişinău: Epigraf, 2007), 96.
114
Cristea, Note ascunse, 67–78.
111
112
A Contested Patriarchate
73
foreign hierarchy, while retaining unity with the Eastern Ecumenical Church
in matters of dogma. The Christian Orthodox Church will have a unitary
organization in the entire Kingdom of Romania, with the participation of all its
constitutive elements, lay and clerical. A special law will establish the fundamental
principles of this organizational unity, including how the church will regulate,
run, and administer its religious, cultural, foundational, and episcopal activities
through its own departments and under the control of the state. The spiritual
and canonical matters of the Romanian Orthodox Church will be regulated by
a single central synodal authority. Metropolitans and bishops of the Romanian
Orthodox Church will be chosen according to special laws. The relationships
between different denominations and the state will be established by law.115
A law organizing the ROC was eventually passed on 5 May 1925, recognizing
Cristea as the new patriarch.116 According to Cristea, the idea of a patriarchate
originally came from the historian Nicolae Iorga and was supported by
‘the Bessarabians’, but he was hesitant to promote it himself until he received
the instruction from the prime minister, Ionel Brătianu.117 A congress of the
Bessarabian Church had actually voted for establishing a patriarchate in March
1921, but it is symptomatic of Cristea’s centralizing outlook that he saw this
move as an indication of support rather than as a policy the ROC needed to
implement.118 A new cathedral, the Church of the Salvation of the Nation, was
proposed as the seat of the new patriarchate, but it was not built until 2018.119
The process of creating an autocephalous Romanian patriarchate thus
embedded a number of festering sores within the Church. Miron Cristea’s
refusal to incorporate elements of lay church governance from Transylvania
and Bessarabia alienated clergy from those regions who were already upset at
being treated like second-class citizens by state officials from the Old Kingdom
sent to ‘Romanianize’ them. The Church in Transyvlania and the Banat had
championed the national cause for decades, only to find itself pushed aside
in Greater Romania. Cristea’s alliance with the National Liberal Party further
put him at odds with the Transylvanian wing of the Church, which maintained
close ties first with the Romanian National Party and then with its successor, the
‘Constituţia României din 28 martie 1923’, Monitorul oficial, 29 March 1923.
‘Lege pentru organizarea Bisericii Ortodoxe Române’, Monitorul oficial, 4 May 1925.
117
Cristea, Note ascunse, 94–5.
118
Boris Buzilă, ‘Patriarhie pentru ţara întregită, Mitropolie pentru provincia revenită la sînul Ţării’, in
Mitropolitul Gurie: Misiunea de credinţă şi cultură, ed. Silvia Grossu (Chişinău: Epigraf, 2007), 19.
119
Ibid., 101.
115
116
74
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
National Peasantist Party. Church support for the state’s nation-building project
undermined the potential for the ROC to bring Ruthenian and Russian believers
in Bukovina and Bessarabia into its fold as they became targets of concerted
Romanianization campaigns. Orthodox Christians in both Bukovina and
Bessarabia had long watched their churches submit to any and every demand
of the state, and discovering that the ROC planned to continue that tradition in
order to maintain its position as the ‘dominant church’ must have been a bitter
disappointment.
4
Reaction
The process of unifying four different churches into a single patriarchate
understandably caused some people to worry that something was being
lost in the process. Tensions between metropolitans and bishops reflected
dissatisfaction among parish clergy and laypeople as well, which in some
cases resulted in the formation of new religious movements. As a society
experiencing extraordinary social and political upheavals, including new
borders, a nationalizing state, industrialization, new communication and
transportation networks and new political ideologies, inter-war Romania was
a fecund environment for religious innovation. With monasticism in decline
and ever higher expectations being placed on both priests and laypeople, two
of the most significant new religious movements of the period emerged in
regions where monasticism and the monastic approach to spirituality had
been strongest. The first, Inochentism, began in Bessarabia just before the First
World War. Its apocalyptic belief that the end times were near included a strong
criticism of the Church and the state, a critique that transferred smoothly onto
the Romanian state and Orthodox Church once the region became part of
Greater Romania. The second, Old Calendarism (Stilism), emerged in many
of the same places, but the two movements developed independently. As a
rejection of the Romanian Orthodox Church’s (ROC’s) decision to change
the liturgical calendar in 1924, Old Calendarism expressed a deep hostility
towards the ROC and the modern nation-state. Both Inochentism and Old
Calendarism were grounded in traditional forms of rural Orthodox piety
and sought to worship God more seriously than they believed was possible
in the official Church. In many ways their critiques reflected the Church’s
failure to live up to the standards it taught in its sermons, catechisms and
devotional literature.
78
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Inochentism
Inochentism emerged out of the life and teachings of Ion Levizor, better known
as Inochentie of Balta. Born in the village of Cosouţi in Soroca county – then
part of the Russian Empire – in 1875, he became a spiritual leader for thousands
of people across Bessarabia. According to a hagiography written by Filimon
Postolache in 1924, Inochentie had a religious experience at the age of nineteen
when a supernatural voice cried out, ‘the time is now, hurry yourself!’ Postolache
says that Inochentie understood this moment as ‘a revelation from heaven that
the time when all the injustices of man will be overcome is close and it is time
for him to call the people to repent’.1 After a period spent wandering through
Russia, he entered a monastery in Dobruşa, near his home town. He then began
to travel, staying at various monasteries and holy sites around Russia for between
nine months and three years, including apparently meeting Tsar Nicholas II and
witnessing the Bloody Sunday massacre of January 1905. The foremost expert
on Inochentism, James Kapaló, writes that during his ten years spent in various
Russian monasteries ‘Ioan Levizor was undoubtedly exposed to the political and
religious currents sweeping Russia and he seems to have developed a profound
sense of the impending crisis and its implications.’2
Inochentie joined the monastery at Balta around 1906 and received a second
spiritual calling during a ceremony for the reburial of the remains of the holy
man Feodosie Leviţchi. Approaching Feodosie’s coffin, Inochentie heard a voice
saying ‘Inochentie! Take my cross and walk ahead, because fire will come from
within it and all devils will be deposed. Call the people to repent as they won’t
repent of their own free will, they have to be compelled to repent. With fire
and sword you will cleanse the world’.3 He began a powerful preaching career
from this point onwards, transforming Balta into a pilgrimage site where
people experienced supernatural healings and Inochentie exorcised demons.
Concern about Inochentie’s activities soon spread, and in 1910 Bishop Serafim
of Bessarabia warned that
He practices rituals of exorcism in the presence of crowds of people and the
possessed persons glorify him in their screams. Through this, he created
amongst the dark masses of people an image of himself as saint, healer and
1
2
3
Filimon Postolache, În scurt viaţa şi faptele Părintelui Inochentie de la Balta (Bârlad: Tip. Const. D.
Lupaşcu, 1924), quoted in Kapaló, Inochentism, 20. My account of Inochentism is taken entirely
from Kapaló.
Kapaló, Inochentism, 23.
Postolache, Viaţa şi faptele, quoted in ibid., 26.
Reaction
79
prophet. By pronouncing incantations, by using various threats, by practicing
open public confessions, hieromonk Inochentie leads many people into a state
of ecstasy and illness.4
His following and reputation continued to grow despite attempts by the Church
to limit it, and he was exiled to Siberia in 1913. A number of his followers
accompanied him into exile, ‘hiding in the forest and going to him at night
when no one could see’.5 Inochentie died on 30 November 1917, but his
movement continued. His followers built a new community in the province of
Kherson, near Balta, creating an underground monastery known as the Garden
of Paradise. The community was destroyed and hundreds of its inhabitants
murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1921.6
Inochentism continued in Bessarabia even after the destruction of the Garden
of Paradise, taking on strong millenarian features. Nae Ionescu’s Cuvântul,
which was markedly hostile to Inochentism, reported in 1932 that ‘where the
movement had once been restricted to a single point, now it extended and
gained followers in every locality where those who were expelled from Balta are
now installed’.7 Inochentists practised celibacy and sold their possessions to wait
for the end times. They likened Inochentie to the prophets Elijah, Enoch and
John the Baptist, as well as claiming that he was ‘the embodiment of the Holy
Spirit’.8 Inochentists dug and sanctified wells believed to contain holy water, had
ecstatic seizures similar to those of epileptics and encouraged women to take an
important role in the movement by serving as administrators and evangelists.9
One Inochentist community established by a monk named Ioan Zlotea criticized
both the Church and state for their material wealth and abuses of power. They
were well known for fasting regularly and for abstaining from pork, all of which
enhanced their reputation in the region.10
Defining Inochentism as heretical and ‘sectarian’, the ROC, the state, the press
and Romanian society more generally persecuted them throughout the inter-war
period. Newspapers accused Inochentists of ritual murder and sexual deviancy
and police often took bizarre and unverified allegations about them at face
value.11 A police report from 1923 wrote that ‘they are not just simple religious
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Quoted in ibid., 30.
Postolache, Viaţa şi faptele, quoted in ibid., 46.
Ibid., 47–9.
‘Cum se dezvoltă Inochentismul în Basarabia’, Cuvântul (1932), quoted in ibid., 107.
Ibid., 57–71.
Ibid., 74–106.
Ibid., 178–88.
Ibid., 107–77.
80
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
maniacs, but are real gangs of criminals who corrupt girls 11 and 12 years of age
so that they can use water to cleanse them of sin and make saints out of them’.12
In addition to showing how peasants interpreted the violence of the First
World War and the political upheavals of the Russian Revolution, the story of
Inochentism illustrates widespread dissatisfaction with the spirituality available
through the Orthodox Church. In particular, Kapaló argues that Inochentism
represented ‘a radical rejection of the idea of the nation as a vehicle for salvation’.13
Lay Inochentists embraced monastic spiritual practices such as fasting, celibacy
and poverty. They engaged in person-to-person evangelism just as Repenters
did. An Inochentist oral tradition recorded by Kapaló in 2014 emphasizes that
Inochentists saw their ascetic practices as a critique of what was lacking in the
established Church.14 Both Inochentie and his followers were repeatedly victims
of violent state oppression and their literature associated the Orthodox Church
closely with the Russian and Romanian states as abusive, authoritarian institutions.
Old Calendarism
Old Calendarism (Stilism) emerged in reaction to the ROC’s decision to change
the religious calendar, including moving saint’s days and the date of Easter.
In 325 the Council of Nicea decided that Easter should be celebrated on ‘the
first Sunday after the full moon which coincides with the Spring equinox or
immediately thereafter’.15 The date of Easter thus moves from April to May
each year, depending on the lunar cycle. There were various explanations
for this movement. The fictional Moş Dragne, for example, learned from his
priest that the date of Easter moves ‘so that we never celebrate it on the same
day the Jews celebrate Passover’.16 The Julian calendar included too many leap
days, however, and over time the date of Easter moved away from the March
equinox. The slippage was rectified in the West with a new calendar introduced
by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, but Eastern Orthodox countries retained the
Julian calendar. The rise of the scientific worldview and its association with
Western modernity caused Romanian elites to worry that the Julian calendar
12
13
14
15
16
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 117/1923, f. 2.
Kapaló, Inochentism, 172.
Ibid., 183.
Quoted in N. Coculescu, Chestiunea calendarului (Bucharest: Tipografia Corpului Didactic C.
Ispăsescu & G. Brătănescu, 1898), 7.
Călinescu, Dialog între Moş Dragne, 49.
Reaction
81
made their country look ‘backward’. ‘We are on the verge of the twentieth
century’, the astronomer Nicolae Coculescu argued in 1898, ‘which we will enter
thirteen days later than other civilized nations because we refuse to relinquish
a secular error, finding ourselves behind Japan, which will be welcomed into
the European concert before the Belgium of the orient!’17 An abortive attempt
had been made to change the calendar in 1864, and the Gregorian calendar
was adopted by the Romanian state in 1919 without being extended to the
Church. The ecumenical patriarch called a pan-Orthodox council in 1923 to
find a solution to the problem, which was attended by a Romanian delegation
that included Iuliu Scriban and the astronomers George Demestrescu and Petru
Drăghici. With several important exceptions, most Eastern Orthodox churches
adopted the Gregorian calendar within the next ten years.
When the Romanian Synod introduced the new calendar in 1924 it
emphasized that the purpose was not to conform the ROC with the West but to
bring the church calendar in line with that of the Romanian state.18 Miron Cristea
distributed a pastoral letter that was to be read in every church. Archbishop
Gurie Grosu argued that ‘some say that we’re copying the Germans … We are
not copying anyone, but truthfully we want the signs of our calendar to align
with the signs of the heavens. We are sticking with the Orthodox Church
calendar, just without those thirteen days which separate us from the signs of the
heavens’.19 Iuliu Scriban published an article in Glasul monahilor (The Monastic
Voice) aimed at convincing a popular audience. Scriban imagined a fictitious
peasant who, on being told of the reform by his parish priest, responded, ‘well,
if it changes, here in the village we’ll kill the mayor first …’. The peasant’s wise
interlocutor replied that
The calendar is not a step that you take, but a path that you follow. And it is not
you that follows this path, but the earth around the sun. You just calculate how
long this path takes … See why we have to fix it; if your clothes came back from the
tailor a size too large, you give them back and make them smaller. It is the same
for us at the moment, we are correcting some sewing from the past which was
too large and making time fit, just as they did in the days of the Church Fathers.20
17
18
19
20
Coculescu, Chestiunea calendarului, 10.
Radu Petre Mureşan, Stilismul în România (1924–2011) (Sibiu: Agnos, 2012), 22–5.
Gurie Grosu, Luminătorul 25 (1924): 1–4, quoted in Andreea Petruescu, ‘Mişcarea stilistă în
Basarabia, 1935–1936. Cauze şi soluţii. Perspective locale’, Caietele CNSAS 9, no. 1–2(17–18)
(2016): 62.
Iuliu Scriban ‘Se schimbă calendarul’, Glasul monahilor 1–6 (1923–4), quoted in Radu Petre
Mureşan, Stilismul în România (1924–2011) (Sibiu: Agnos, 2012), 31.
82
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Not everyone accepted – or even heard – Scriban’s arguments, and a movement
emerged in Moldavia and Bessarabia known as Old Calendarism. Old
Calendarists argued that the new calendar ignored the natural rhythms of life.
‘Everything functions in accordance with the old calendar’, they said.
Look, the cuckoo doesn’t sing on Annunciation with the new calendar; it
sings with the old calendar. When has the cuckoo always sung? He sings until
Midsummer. Now Midsummer passes and he is still singing … The soil follows
the old calendar too. No-one sows on the new first day of March, but the old first
day of March is perfect.21
Old Calendarism was simultaneously a protest against the ROC and the
increasing attempts of the modern nation-state to interfere in village life.
Thinking about the iconoclastic controversy in the Byzantine Empire, Leslie
Brubaker and John Haldon write that ‘the relationship between individuals
and the holy was redefined at the same time as that between individuals and
their ruler’.22 Much the same argument could be made about other religious
movements, including the sixteenth-century wars of religion, the rise of Old
Belief in eighteenth-century Russia and the spread of Old Calendarism in
1920s Romania. As Andreea Petruescu notes, ‘with time the acceptance of the
calendar reform in Bessarabia became synonymous with the acceptance of the
national church and the Romanian state’.23 The ROC recognized this problem
and in a pastoral letter from 1925 Gurie Grosu wrote that ‘some troublemakers
are saying that the calendar reforms come from our Romanian brothers,
that they are breaking our laws … But this rumour is not true. For the ones
who introduced the calendar reform were the Greeks and the Patriarch of
Constantinople in 1922.’24
Old Calendarism appeared in many of the same areas that Inochentism was
strongest and seems to have taken the authorities by surprise. A history of the
movement written by local police in 1948 stated that
21
22
23
24
Silvia Grossu, ‘Impactul social al problemei modificării calendarului creştin’, in Mitropolitul Gurie:
Misiunea de credinţă şi cultură, ed. Silvia Grossu (Chişinău: Epigraf, 2007), 150.
Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680–850: A History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), 10; quoted in Angie Heo, ‘Imagining Holy Personhood:
Anthropological Thresholds of the Icon’, in Praying with the Senses: Contemporary Orthodox
Christian Spirituality in Practice, ed. Sonja Luehrmann (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
2018), 88.
Petruescu, ‘Mişcarea stilistă în Basarabia’, 62.
Quoted in Boldişor, File din viaţa unei biserici, 64.
Reaction
83
In the regions with monasteries and especially where religious mysticism
was more widespread, this decision of the Synod [to change the calendar] is
seen as a blow to the foundations of the Orthodox faith and so many refuse to
accept the new calendar in any way, continuing to hold the feast days according
to the old (Julian) calendar. They are known as Old Calendarists. Several monks
who have been expelled from the monasteries, whether for inappropriate
monastic behaviour or for not recognizing the new calendar, associate
themselves with others who do not want to accept the new calendar, organizing
them and pushing them even further into religious mysticism. These monks,
coming in particular from Baia and Neamţ counties, succeed in gathering about
60 percent of the population of these counties around them, building churches
and houses of prayer in a number of places. To distinguish the new sect from
Orthodox Christians who follow the new calendar, Old Calendarists display
their sectarianism by growing large beards.25
The problem was complicated by a lack of consensus about the changes even
among elites. Alexandru Averescu’s People’s Party made returning to the old
calendar one of its election promises in 1926 and the right-wing National
Christian Defence League (LANC) did the same during the early 1930s.26
Moreover, Gurie Grosu and Visarion Puiu allowed Easter to be celebrated
according to the old calendar in 1929, thus undermining the very reform they
claimed to support.27 A group of protesters marched down the village streets of
Careii Mari that year chanting, ‘Down with the priests! Long live Disorder!’.28
One newspaper article claimed that the Old Calendarists avoided Orthodox
priests, ‘not even saying hello’, and that ‘the churches remain empty of believers’.29
Newspapers such as Credinţa ortodoxă (The Orthodox Faith) combated Old
Calendarism and Inochentism by giving advice about Orthodox praxis, such as
how to properly cross oneself and the proper ways to fast.30
An Old Calendarist protest took place in the village of Fântânele during
1933, when Old Calendarism grew rapidly in the wake of claims that the parish
priest was charging too much money for services such as baptisms and funerals.
Old Calendarists designated a private house as a ‘house of prayer’, setting up
25
26
27
28
29
30
‘Studiu’, in the Archives of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (henceforth
ACNSAS), Fond Documentar, Dosar 9486, vol. 1, f. 238.
Mureşan, Stilismul în România, 34; Petruescu, ‘Mişcarea stilistă în Basarabia’, 71.
Mureşan, Stilismul în România, 35. Police complained that Bishop Visarion even supported Old
Calendarism. ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 125/1935, f. 27.
Mureşan, Stilismul în România, 36.
Activitatea dezastruoasă a stiliştilor în jud. Baia şi Neamţ’, Calendarul, 469 (1933): 3.
Credinţa ortodoxă (1932–40).
84
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
icons and prayer books in the courtyard and barricading the gate to prevent
the police from entering. Led by an itinerant monk, they claimed to be ready
to die for their beliefs and threatened to kill anyone who tried to prevent
them worshipping.31 The conflict between Old Calendarists and the state
escalated in 1935 due to increased efforts by police to contain the movement
and thanks to the new Bishop of Bălţi and Hotin, Tit Simedrea, who worked to
enforce Orthodoxy in his episcopate.32 Old Calendarists locked up Orthodox
churches and prevented priests from performing the liturgy according to the
new calendar. They provided bodyguards for their own priests who barricaded
themselves in their churches to avoid being imprisoned by the gendarmerie.33
Police targeted Russian minority communities in particular, claiming that they
were being supported by White Russian émigrés from Belgrade and Vienna.34
According to complaints received by the government, worshippers were pulled
out of their churches and beaten on the streets while gendarmes watched.35 A
young girl from the village of Cuciurul Mic in Cernăuţi county reported seeing
a vision in September 1935 in which God told her to keep celebrating the feast
days according to the old calendar.36 Despite low literacy levels in the region,
Old Calendarists produced pamphlets defending their beliefs and ‘exposing the
lies’ of the ROC.37 One pamphlet apparently warned that ‘he who accepts the
Gregorian Easter and the Papist calendar, be he priest or lay person’, may he ‘not
decay after death but labour for all eternity’.38
Both Church and state were eager to wipe the movement out, but each
blamed the other for failing to do so. The police complained that Church leaders
in the area did nothing to combat Old Calendarism or even to alert them to its
presence.39 This was not quite true. Priests in Olteniţa tried getting people to
go to church by force. When the Old Calendarists refused to stay for the liturgy
the priests began refusing to conduct funerals, leading to a stand-off that the
gendarmes had to step in to resolve.40 Lacking the resources to properly control
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 13408, vol. 2, f. 9.
Petruescu, ‘Mişcarea stilistă în Basarabia’, 72–3.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 125/1935, f. 5, 92.
Ibid., Dosar 125/1935, ff. 10–11, 27.
ANIC, Fond Ministerul Propagandei Naţionale, Dosar 5/1930, ff. 12–13.
‘Nota informativă, 4 octombrie 1935’, in ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 125/1935, f. 1.
Petruescu, ‘Mişcarea stilistă în Basarabia’, 70, n. 34.
According to a report from the newspaper Cuvântul. Quoted in Mureşan, Stilismul în România, 37.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 125/1935, f. 14.
Ibid., Dosar 20/1924, f. 126.
Reaction
85
the problem, gendarmes warned that only ‘a military occupation of the region’
would wipe it out.41 In response the Synod argued that Old Calendarism was ‘a
movement aimed at changing the current regime’ and that ‘the old calendar is
only a platform’.42 ‘Encouraged by the fact that no action is taken against them’,
Miron Cristea wrote to the Ministry of the Interior, ‘these agitators become
aggressive and dangerous to the safety and lives of missionary priests and other
believers’.43 According to one report, by 1936 Old Calendarism had over a million
adherents.44
Over time the movement developed its own rituals and practices. A police
report from 1948 noted that Old Calendarists disturbed church services by
singing songs appropriate to the old calendar, sanctified wells by throwing
crosses into them on particular dates and refused to send their children to school
on days that had been feast days in the past.45 A study on an Old Calendarist
community in Slătioara commissioned by the ROC in 1968 wrote that the Old
Calendarist leadership were substituting themselves for the ROC hierarchy
and labelling the official Church as schismatic. They encouraged believers not
to have any contact with Orthodox priests and cultivated a sober attitude on
festive occasions such as weddings as well as avoiding going to the cinema. The
report said that they gave money to the poor, helped the sick and contributed
to the digging of wells. Evangelism was a core element of the movement by this
time. Believers spread their message from person to person, through religious
celebrations and by door-knocking on the New Year. They refused to work on
feast days and did not register marriages with the state.46
Separating themselves from Romanian society, and in particular from the
secular state and the Orthodox Church that supported it, Inochentists and Old
Calendarists engaged in a sustained critique of Church-state relations. They
identified the ROC as fallen by avoiding Orthodox priests and by developing
their own, higher, standards of holiness. Both movements flourished in a region
where dissatisfaction with the Greater Romanian state was highest, and their
success can be seen as evidence that for many people the state’s failings reflected
badly on a church that had tied its fate to an earthly government.
41
42
43
44
45
46
‘Aviz nr. 188 din 18 Sept 1935’, in ibid., Dosar 125/1935, f. 90v.
Letter, Sfântul Sinod to Ministerul Instrucţiunii, 15 July 1935, in ibid., Dosar 125/1935, ff. 100–5.
Quoted in Petruescu, ‘Mişcarea stilistă în Basarabia’, 75.
Petruescu, ‘Mişcarea stilistă în Basarabia’, 62.
‘1 Februarie 1948’, in ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 9486, vol. 1, f. 228.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 153/1968, ff. 12–45.
86
5
Catholics
Of all the churches, it was the status of Catholicism that was most bitterly
contested by Orthodox leaders during the 1920s. In particular, the negotiation of
the 1927 concordat with the Vatican prompted accusations from the Romanian
Orthodox Church (ROC) that the government was surrendering control to a
foreign power. Between them, Roman and Greek Catholics made up 14.7 per
cent of the country’s population at the time of the 1930 census. Catholicism
was strongly identified with ethnic and regional minorities which had been
incorporated into Greater Romania after the First World War. Ninety-five per
cent of Greek Catholics came from either Transylvania, Crişana or Maramureş,
and only 13.5 per cent of Roman Catholics were from regions that had been
part of Romania before 1918.1 The Roman Catholic Church had only created
archdioceses in Bucharest and Iaşi in the 1880s, and was commonly associated
with Hungarian-ness because many Roman Catholics identified either as
Hungarians or Csangos.2
Discussions about the status of Catholicism in Greater Romania had begun
in 1920 but were not concluded until 1929.3 The Orthodox position was that
any reconciliation with Catholicism was ‘too difficult’ and any attempts to
make peace should be abandoned. The newspaper Ţara noastră (Our Country)
argued in 1926 that ‘we want a union of the two churches too, as does any
honest Romanian. But if this union cannot take place through a spontaneous
manifestation [of brotherhood], but only through fratricidal fighting, then it is
preferable to give up on it.’ 4 Orthodox newspapers wrote about ‘the pope with all
his antichrist tyranny, with all his frightening heresies’ and claimed that he put
1
2
3
4
Manuilă, Recensământul general, xxiv, xxx.
Maner, Multikonfessionalität, 49.
Ibid., 225.
‘Treuga Dei’, Ţara noastră 7, no. 34 (1926): 1000, quoted in Kührer-Wielach, ‘Orthodoxer
Jesuitismus, 319.
88
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
on ‘the airs of a god descended among unfortunate mortals’.5 Biserica Ortodoxă
Română stated that Catholics ‘praise our weaknesses because of delight and
not out of sincere feelings. This Jesuit-Catholic system casts the scale of values
into darkness, introduces confusion, makes people unable to recognize the
real aspects of life and forces them to think only according to their misleading
Catholic patterns.’ 6
Catholicism posed a problem for Romanian nationalists because many of them
believed that Romanian-ness was synonymous with Orthodoxy. According to
the wisdom of the day, the Romanian people had embraced Christianity thanks
either to the preaching of the apostle Andrew or Roman legionaries settling in
Dacia at the beginning of the second century. ‘We have the Christian faith just
as it grew from the first seed, sown in these parts by Christian missionaries’,
wrote Sebastian Pârvulescu, a parish priest from Cernădia-Gorj in 1911, who
used the antiquity of Romanian Christianity to argue that the Orthodox Church
had preserved the ‘original’ faith of the apostles.7 Nicolae Iorga, the pre-eminent
historian of the Romanian nation, argued in the 1928 edition of his History of
the Romanian Churches that large numbers of the Roman settlers in Dacia were
Christians fleeing persecution in Asia Minor. Christianity apparently soon spread
among the pagan Dacians as well, and a ‘Christianity without canonical bishops’
took root in the area, where it survived for the next thousand years. Iorga argued
that Greek and Slavic influences first entered Romanian Christianity as part
of the cultural renaissance brought about by the creation of the first Bulgarian
Orthodox patriarchate in the tenth century. Such influences, he wrote, involved
naming sections of the liturgy and memorizing the Creed, and in no way imply
that Bulgarian rule extended north of the Danube.8
With the blessing and possibly at the urging of the emperor, the ecumenical
patriarch collaborated with local rulers in establishing a Metropolitanate of
Ungro-Wallachia based in either Curtea de Argeș or Câmpulung in 1359,
followed by one at Severin in 1370, and another for Moldavia at Suceava in
1394 (ratified in 1401). Establishing Orthodox Church structures provided
international recognition for the newly independent principalities of Wallachia
5
6
7
8
Misionarul 2, no. 2 (1930): 132 and Glasul monahilor 5, no. 114 (1928): 3, both quoted in Ciprian
Ghişa, ‘The Image of the Roman Catholic Church in the Orthodox Press of Romania, 1918–1940’, in
Eastern Orthodox Encounters of Identity and Otherness: Values, Self-Reflection, Dialogue, ed. Adreeii
Krawchuk and Thomas Bremer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 112.
Biserica Ortodoxă Română 13 (1923): 1010, quoted in ibid., 113.
Sebastian Pârvulescu, Biserica noastră naţională în raport cu celelalte confesiuni (Vălenii de Munte:
Tipografia Neamul Românesc, 1911), 18.
Iorga, Istoria bisericii româneşti, vol. 1, 28–33.
Catholics
89
and Moldavia and helped protect them from the imperialist designs of their
Catholic neighbours.9 Romanian priests, scholars and rulers began to use
Middle Bulgarian as their administrative and liturgical language during the
fourteenth century, incorporating Slavic elements into what had hitherto been
a Byzantine Christianity.10 In the early twentieth century Romanians looked
back to the fourteenth century as the official beginning of their Church. ‘The
Romanian Orthodox Church established its hierarchy at the same time as the
consolidation of the Romanian lands’, the Liberal politician Petru Gârboviceanu
wrote. ‘Both in Muntenia and in Moldavia, and at roughly the same time. We had
both metropolitans and bishops right from the beginning.’11 History mattered
because if Romanian Christianity was extremely ancient and ecclesiastically
independent, then to be Romanian was to be Orthodox. Vasile Pocitan, a teacher
at two of Bucharest’s leading schools and the future Archbishop of Huşi, claimed
that ‘Christianity is just as deeply embedded in the soul of our people as the yeast
of Romanian nationhood. There was even a time when we were more Christian
than we were Romanian.’12
Greek Catholicism
Ironically, it was Greek Catholics who made the story of the Roman origins of
the Romanian people into the central founding myth of Romanian nationalism.
The Greek Catholic Church had been established by the Holy Roman Emperor
in 1698 along with promises that its adherents would receive rights and
privileges in return for acknowledging the papacy. After struggling for its first
few decades, the Greek Catholic Church eventually flourished in Transylvania
between 1729 and 1744 under the leadership of Bishop Ion Inochenţiu MicuKlein. A capable organizer, he moved the seat of the bishopric to Blaj, where
he built an impressive cathedral and encouraged Greek Catholic higher
education. Klein is remembered today as a tireless advocate for Transylvania’s
Romanian population. Keith Hitchins points out that Klein used the word natio
interchangeably to mean ‘members of the Uniate Church’ or ‘a community held
9
10
11
12
Mircea Păcurariu, Istoria Bisericii Ortodoxe Române (Sibiu: Patriarhul Bisericii Ortodoxe Române,
1991), 253–85; Keith Hitchins, A Concise History of Romania (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014), 23–4.
Hitchins, A Concise History, 37.
Petru Gârboviceanu, Biserica ortodoxa şi cultele străine din regatul român (Bucharest: Institutul de
Arte Grafice, 1904), ix.
Vasile Pocitan, Patriarhatele Bisericii Ortodoxe (Bucharest: Tipografiile Române Unite, 1926), 88.
90
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
together by common origins, customs, and origins’, such that when he said
‘Uniates’ he also meant ‘Romanians’.13 Klein tried to use the slippage between the
two meanings of natio to extend the privileges promised by the Habsburgs when
they created the Greek Catholic Church to all Romanian speakers.14 He was not
always successful, but the educational privileges that Greek Catholics did enjoy
helped them connect with strains of Enlightenment thought that introduced
them to modern nationalism.
Thanks to their newfound access to higher education, Greek Catholic scholars
such as Samuil Micu-Klein, Petru Maior and Gheorghe Șincai established the
intellectual and literary foundations of Romanian nationalism through their
works on history and linguistics.15 In 1774 Bishop Klein’s nephew, Samuil MicuKlein, wrote a sweeping history of Christianity in Transylvania in the hope
that the Romanians would receive their own metropolitanate if he could prove
that their Church preserved the original faith of the early Roman Christians.16
Subsequent Orthodox elites appreciated the contributions of the Transylvanian
School, as it came to be known, but resented the fact that it had come out of
Greek Catholic rather than Orthodox circles. Despite having tied their national
heritage to Rome, Romanian Greek Catholic leaders repeatedly resisted
attempts to Latinize their Church to the point of provoking talk of ‘crises’ in
their relationship with the papacy. A Greek Catholic metropolitanate of Alba
Iulia and Făgăraș was established in 1853, which was independent of Hungarian
Catholicism and subordinate only to the Pope, giving them broad autonomy
in the years leading up to 1867.17 A committed Catholic, the Emperor Francis
Joseph encouraged ostentatious celebrations of religious holidays such as Corpus
Christi, often attending the festivities himself. Thanks to state support, by the
late nineteenth century Catholic priests were generally well educated, laypeople
had a reasonable grasp of theology and the Church played an important role in
secular education.18
Despite the emperor’s support, the dominance of Catholicism in Hungary was
contested by the class of liberal elites who controlled Hungarian politics from
13
14
15
16
17
18
Hitchins, ‘Religion and Rumanian National Consciousness’, 221–223.
Keith Hitchins, A Nation Discovered: Romanian Intellectuals in Transylvania and the Idea of Nation,
1700–1848 (Bucharest: The Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1999).
Sorin Mitu, National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania (Budapest: Central European University
Press, 2001).
Keith Hitchins, ‘Samuel Clain and the Rumanian Enlightenment in Transylvania’, Slavic Review 23,
no. 4 (1964): 668.
Dăncilă-Ineoan, Eppel and Iudean, Voices of the Churches, 86–7.
Maria Bucur, Heroes and Victims: Remembering War in Twentieth-Century Romania (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2009), 21, 32.
Catholics
91
1848 onwards. The liberals hoped to introduce lay governance in church affairs
and to establish a secular state independent of any one church. Empowered
by the 1867 Compromise which transformed the Habsburg Monarchy into
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they attempted to introduce religious equality,
although only succeeded in introducing a ‘hierarchy of privileges’ that benefited
some churches over others while giving Orthodoxy the status of a ‘state church’.19
The clergy responded to what they saw as an attack on their autonomy and
privileges with an organized campaign that culminated in the formation of a
Catholic political party in 1895 in the wake of new laws regulating civil and
inter-religious marriage. In an encyclical from 1893 Pope Leo XIII encouraged
Hungarian Catholics in their struggle, writing that ‘we hope that all the Catholics
in Hungary will realise the dangerous turn of affairs in their country and will
find courage and strength in our solicitude and good will. We hope, too, that on
their part they will most conscientiously obey our counsel and admonitions.’20
While neither the state nor the Church wanted a conflict, the result of these laws
was the crystallization of a militant Hungarian middle class eager to assert its
Catholic identity against any attempt to promote religious pluralism.21
Caught up in the midst of Hungarian Church-state politics, the Orthodox
Church found itself at the mercy of the Hungarian state, which interfered in
the election of bishops and at times postponed meetings of the Ecclesiastical
National Congress.22 The lawyer Valer Moldovan accused the government of
gerrymandering episcopal boundaries. He claimed that the administration was
incorporating Romanian speakers into majority Hungarian dioceses as part of a
deliberate strategy of ‘Magyarization’.23 As Roman Catholics were predominantly
Hungarian, Romanian Greek Catholics typically opposed attempts to guarantee
Catholic privilege, which was a not-very-subtle way of saying Hungarian
privilege. Orthodox writers largely ignored Greek Catholic support for
Romanian issues, however. They constantly reminded their readers that the
head of the Catholic Church lived in Rome, and accused Greek Catholics of
being ‘more papist than the Pope’.24 One pamphlet from 1910 signed by ‘a large
19
20
21
22
23
24
Paul Hanebrink, In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890–
1944 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 12–13.
Constanti Hungarorum Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on the Church in Hungary, quoted in DăncilăIneoan et al., Voices of the Churches, 65.
Ibid., 62–8; Hanebrink, In Defense of Christian Hungary, 23–8.
Dăncilă-Ineoan, Eppel and Iudean, Voices of the Churches, 81–4.
Valer Moldovan, Biserica în serviciul maghiarizării (Braşov: Tipografia A. Mureşeanu, 1913), 14–19.
Petru Ionescu, Observări critice la opul ‘Metropolia românilor ortodoxi din Ungaria şi Transilvania’
etc. şi observări la rĕspunsul prea cuvioşiei sale Dlui Arhimandrit Dr Ilarion Puşcariu (Caransebeş:
Tiparul Tiografiei Diecesane, 1901), 11.
92
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
number of Orthodox’ wrote that ‘Propaganda is an institution created by the
Pope in Rome for spreading Catholicism among the pagans and heretics which,
like the Israelite alliance, spreads like a cancer across the whole earth with its
agents and missions.’25
Greek Catholics attacked the Orthodox in return. In his history of Romanian
Orthodoxy from 1910, the Greek Catholic publicist Zenovie Pâclişanu wrote
that he was ‘filled with pain’:
When we see the immense role that the church has had in developing the
national life of the peoples of Western Europe and we think of the tragic destiny
which cast us into the arms of a church of extraordinary sterility, robed in a
soul-destroying Byzantinianism which lacked the power of life, and lacks it even
today; when we think that it could have been a powerful wellspring of life if the
church hierarchy had had other connections. It could have been a pedestal upon
which we could have raised up a string of enlightened peoples.26
While the Orthodox believed that the Greek Catholics were ‘stealing souls’ which
were rightfully theirs, Greek Catholics pointed to weakness and corruption
within the Orthodox Church and celebrated their own cultural and educational
achievements.
Having been a dominant church under the Hungarians, the Greek Catholic
Church found itself in the position of a minority religion after the war. In 1918
Alexandru Rusu, who later became the Greek Catholic Bishop of Maramureş,
wrote that whereas before the war Greek Catholicism had been a major defender
of ethnic Romanians – ‘a true shield and watch tower for the strength of our
ethnical character’ – now it could focus purely on the care of souls.27 Like
the Orthodox, the Greek Catholics introduced a number of initiatives aimed
at mobilizing the laity and intensifying spiritual life in their churches. This
involved establishing new clerical and lay associations as well as distributing
more devotional literature aimed at a popular readership.28 Most Greek Catholic
writings during the inter-war period emphasized the Church’s victimhood and
25
26
27
28
Mai mulţi ortodoxi, La ‘Ierarchia Românilor din Ardeal şi Ungaria’ (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei
Archidiecesane, 1905), 1.
Zenovie Pâclişanu, Biserica şi românismul (Târgu-Lăpuş: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2005), 10.
Alexandru Rusu, ‘Noua eră şi biserica noastră’, Cultura Creştină 7, no. 17–20 (1918): 336–7, quoted
in Ciprian Ghişa, ‘The Greek-Catholic Discourse of Identity in the Inter-War Period: The Relation
between the Nation and People’s Religious Confession’, Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai Historia 57,
no. 2 (2012): 60.
Sergiu Soica, Biserica greco-catolică din Banat în perioada anilor 1920–1948 (Timişoara: Editura
Eurostampa, 2011), 79–119.
Catholics
93
their persecution at the hands of the Orthodox. At the same time, they repeatedly
stated their loyalty to the Romanian nation and state. Eugen Stroescu wrote in
1922 that
on top of the commandments regarding our fellows, God put the duty towards
the family, which extends with necessity over the large family, over the nation in
which He wanted for each of us to be born in … As Catholics aware of the divine
law, for us, nationalism is not a facultative Evangelical advice from which we can
restrain, but a command that we cannot deny without committing a sin.29
Roman Catholicism
Romania’s territorial expansion after 1918 necessitated a massive reorganization
of the Roman Catholic Church, just as it had of the ROC, with dioceses that
had previously been under Russian and Austro-Hungarian control now being
brought under Romanian administration.30 Both the Archbishop Raymund
Netzhammer of Bucharest and the Papal Nuncio Francesco Marmaggi opposed
the subordination of the Transylvanian diocese to the Romanian Catholic
hierarchy and were hostile to the Vatican’s attempts to arrange a concordat with
the Romanian state. But heads of churches now had to be Romanian citizens, so
Netzhammer was replaced in 1923 and Marmaggi in 1924. The new archbishop
was a Romanian by the name of Alexandru Cisar, who then appointed other
Romanians to leading positions within the church, radically changing the ethnic
composition of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Romania.31 Catholic leaders
complained bitterly about having lost a great deal of property during the land
reform of 1921, about discrimination against Hungarians in Romania and about
the frequent attacks on Catholics in the Orthodox press.32
Noting the close relationship between religion and ethnicity, Florian
Kührer-Wielach has argued that ‘Confessionalism – the political and
ideology instrumentalization of religious affiliation’, is key to understanding
29
30
31
32
Eugen Stroescu, Unirea 6 (1922): 2, quoted in ibid., 66–7.
Marius Oanţa, ‘Arhidieceza romano-catolică de Bucureşti între România Mare şi Republica Populară
Română (1918–1948): Date statistice’, Anuarul Institutului de Istorie George Bariţiu din Cluj-Napoca
57 (2018): 335–44.
R. Chris Davis, Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood: A Minority’s Struggle for National Belonging,
1920–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2018), 39.
Ibid., 39.
94
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
how Orthodoxy functioned to create a more homogeneous population.33
Confessional schools had been abolished in the Old Kingdom during the 1860s,
and now the government decided that the time had come to close them in the
new provinces as well, making schools a pivotal issue in the rivalry between the
churches. Opponents of confessional schools argued that their primary role had
been to fight the ‘race war’ for Romanian culture in Hungary and that they were
now superfluous in an era of the ‘uniform nation-state’.34 This was a spurious
argument, the Catholics responded, because
the church has established, sustained and defended schools according to its
historic right that proceeds from the Saviour’s command to teach the nations. It
has not only cultivated language and love of one’s nation, but above all it sought
to shape religious beliefs, from which the spiritual and moral strengths of our
nation have always flowed: ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith’.
(Gal 3:11)35
Angelescu abolished confessional schools entirely in 1925, stating that ‘our
churches have to realize that the Romanian State that is ours, all of ours, must
be strengthened and that this State can only be strengthened by … letting the
State mold the souls of all its citizens’.36 Impassioned protests came from the
Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Reformed churches, whereas the only
major Orthodox protest against the project came from Nicolae Bălan, who was
also losing his Orthodox schools in Transylvania.37
In 1923 the government legislated that ‘Catholic priests may no longer teach
religious education in schools in the Old Kingdom’. This was no longer just about
regionalism, and Roman Catholics from Roman complained that they were now
‘being treated worse than the brothers from the new provinces’.38 Even when
an earlier law had stated that Roman Catholic priests were allowed to teach
two hours of religious education a week in Catholic villages, local officials had
prevented them from doing so, claiming that no such rights existed.39 A report
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
Florian Kührer-Wielach, ‘Orthodoxer Jesuitismus, katholischer Mystizismus: Konfessionalismus
in Rumänien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Orthodoxa Confessio?: Konfessionsbildung,
Konfessionalisierung und ihre Folgen in der östlichen Christenheit, ed. Mihai-D. Grigore and Florian
Kührer-Wielach (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 307.
‘Stratificarea învăţământului în Ardeal’, Şcoala nouă (1922), quoted in Kührer-Wielach, Siebenbürgen
ohne Siebenbürger?, 146.
Senior, ‘Agonia şcoalei confesionale’, Cultura creştină 13, no. 2 (1924): 34.
Quoted in Livezeanu, Cultural Politics, 47.
Maner, Multikonfessionalität, 317–19.
Petition to the Minister of Education, 28 February 1924, in ANIC, Fond Ministerul Instrucţiunii,
Dosar 289/1924, f. 28.
Letter, Episcopia Catolică de Iaşi to Minister of Education, 13 March 1924, in ibid., f. 39.
Catholics
95
by British Presbyterians on the state of Reformed churches in Transylvania after
a fact-finding mission in October 1920 concluded that
Gross and grievous mismanagement has characterized the occupation and
the administration of the Hungarian territory now ceded, and … vindictive
race-feeling has prompted and condoned a revolting policy of terrorism, and
outrage, and dispossessions, and restraint, of which our Churches and ministers
have been conspicuous victims, not, we believe, because they are Protestant
or Presbyterian, but because they are Magyar by birth and education, and are
regarded as foci of disaffection. Scores of the ministers and office-bearers we
examined had been beaten or imprisoned or threatened with death or violence.
Men are imprisoned for months, untried and even uncharged, by uncontrolled
and irresponsible officials and police. Appeals for justice have been habitually
ignored, or repelled and avenged by punishment, as insults to the good name
of Rumania.40
The Presbyterian report confirmed what became increasingly clear over the next
few years – that if Catholicism was to survive in Romania it would need a solid
legal framework defining its relationship to the state. To this end the Vatican
spent much of the 1920s negotiating a concordat with Romania. Without a
concordat, other churches struggled throughout the inter-war period. By 1930
the Lutheran Church discovered that the money it received from the Romanian
state was far less than it had become used to in Austria-Hungary. Unable to
continue to function otherwise, it began selling Church property and solicited
money from Hungary to fund its schools.41 The Reformed Church found itself
in a similar situation and had to rely on charity from churches in Switzerland.42
Neither of these churches faced the same popular hostility as the Catholics, but
they nonetheless suffered from being classified as ‘minority religions’.
The 1927 concordat
The Vatican had not been represented at the Paris Peace Conferences. Terrified
about the threat of communism, they used concordats as a way to establish
political relations with European nation-states, signing ten such agreements
40
41
42
William A. Curtis, J. R. Fleming and J. MacDonald Webster, Report of the Commission Appointed to
Visit Churches and to Inquire into Conditions Prevailing in Central Europe, August-October 1920, in
Lambeth Palace Archives, R. T. Davidson Papers, Official Letters, 1920, Vol. 198, f. 12.
ANIC, Fond Ministerul Propagandei Naţionale, Dosar 5/1930, ff. 4–7.
Ibid., ff. 24–5.
96
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
between 1922 and 1939.43 Despite having been forced to make concessions to
Romanian nationalism, most Romanian Roman Catholics responded positively
to the concordat signed in 1927 and ratified in 1929.44 Greek Catholics further
defended it against Orthodox attacks in the press.45 The concordat recognized
the Catholic churches as churches (biserici) instead of denominations (culte),
provided government salaries for Catholic priests, gave the Catholic Church
legal status as a corporate entity, required Romanian citizenship from all
teachers in Catholic schools and made Romanian the official Church language.
Individual bishops could, however, allow schools and churches within their
jurisdictions to speak Hungarian.46 Its ratification followed an equally divisive
debate over the 1928 Law of Denominations. Whereas Orthodox leaders insisted
that churches – not parishes – should control ecclesiastical wealth and that the
ROC should receive preferential treatment from the state, other religious leaders
insisted that the state ensure freedom of conscience for its citizens.47
Orthodox leaders were furious with the outcome of both debates. They
argued that ‘Catholicism is and remains a dangerous offensive force opposed
to Orthodoxism and a formidable power capable of successfully penetrating
inside and across the borders of national states’, and that the state had made too
many concessions to the Vatican.48 In an angry speech in the Romanian Senate,
Nicolae Bălan complained that the concordat undermined the constitution and
the Law of Denominations, forced the state to support Catholic proselytism,
allowed for too many Catholic episcopates relative to the size of their population
and promoted the ‘Magyarization’ of the Church.49 The Greek Catholic Bishop
Iuliu Hossu of Gherla responded that a treaty of this nature was necessary to
bring episcopal boundaries in line with national boundaries and hoped that
the new laws would finally bring Orthodox and Catholic conflicts to a close,
emphasizing that ‘justice has finally been done’.50
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
Giuliana Chamedes, A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 34–68.
Ciprian Ghişa, ‘Întărind vechi alterităţi, ridicând noi frontiere: Concordatul dintre România şi
Vatican – 1929’, Studia Universitatis Babeş Bolyai – Theologia Catholica 55, no. 4 (2010): 43–56.
‘In chestia concordatului’, Unirea, 6 July 1929, 2–3.
Tudor Popescu, Concordatul cu Papa (Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice Răsăritul, 1927), 41–84.
Constantin Schifirneţ ed., Biserica noastră şi cultele minoritare: Marea discuţie parlamentară în jurul
legii cultelor (Bucharest: Editura Albatros, 2000).
I. Mateiu, Valoarea concordatului încheiat cu Vaticanul (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane,
1929), 12–13.
Nicolae Bălan, Biserica împotriva concordatului (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane, 1929).
‘Cuvântarea Prea Sfinţitului Iuliu ţinută în Senat la discuţia ratificării Concordatului cu Sfântul
Scaun al Romei’, Curierul creştin, 1 August 1929, 121–37,
Catholics
97
The debate over the concordat also had a wide-ranging impact on the
Romanian public sphere. According to Ionuţ Biliuţă it was the 1927 concordat
that disillusioned the Romanian Orthodox clergy with democracy and caused
them to turn their sympathies increasingly towards right-wing and fascist
politics.51 Indeed, a new group of writers calling themselves ‘Orthodoxists’ rose
to prominence in the midst of the anti-Catholic sentiment of the late 1920s,
pushing Orthodox public discourse further towards ultranationalism.52 The
priest Ion Dobre, better known by his pen name of Nichifor Crainic, established
his reputation after the First World War by publishing poetry with nationalist
overtones and engaging in debates about Romanian culture with other literary
critics. In 1926 he began teaching courses on Christian mysticism at the new
theological faculty in Chişinău and started editing the literary magazine
Gândirea (Thought).53 In the pages of Gândirea he championed a literary and
artistic current he called ‘Traditionalism’. Rather than ‘a longing for the past’,
Crainic argued that ‘traditionalism does not appear as … a static force, dead
with its back to the future, but as a living, dynamic force, with bursts torrentially
forward out of the past towards the growth of new and more adequate forms
of its existence’.54 Crainic’s Traditionalism fought for ‘a culture created with
autochthonous values’, maintaining that ‘our orientation cannot but be towards
the Orient, that is, towards ourselves, towards that which we are through the
inheritance of which we are worthy’.55 Alongside – and in competition with
– Crainic, the religious philosopher Nae Ionescu promoted his own brand of
‘Orthodoxism’ through the newspaper Cuvântul (The Word), which he edited
from 1926 onwards. Ionescu established his credentials as an expert on Orthodox
Christianity through his celebrated lectures on mysticism at the University of
Bucharest from 1924 onwards, though the bulk of these lectures were plagiarized
from a book by the English Anglo-Catholic writer Evelyn Underhill.56 Ionescu
equated Protestantism with democracy, capitalism and rationalism, all of which
51
52
53
54
55
56
Ionuţ Biliuţă, ‘The Ultranationalist Newsroom: Orthodox “Ecumenism” in the Legionary
Ecclesiastical Newspapers’, Review of Ecumenical Studies 10, no. 2 (2018): 192.
George Călinescu, ‘“Crinul alb” şi “Laurul negru”’, Viaţa literară, 3 November 1928, 1–2.
Roland Clark, ‘Orthodoxy and Nation-Building: Nichifor Crainic and Religious Nationalism in
1920s Romania’, Nationalities Papers 40, no. 4 (2012): 525–43.
Nichifor Crainic, ‘A doua neatârnare’, Gândirea 1 (1926), reprinted in Nichifor Crainic, Puncte
cardinale în haos (Iaşi: Editura Timpul, 1996), 153.
Nichifor Crainic, ‘Sensul tradiţiei’, Gândirea, 9, no. 1–2 (1929): 2–3.
Marta Petreu, ‘Istoria unui Plagiat: Nae Ionescu – Evelyn Underhill’, România literară 27, no. 49–
50 (1994); Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual
Consciousness (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1911).
98
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
he saw as evils threatening to destroy Romanian culture.57 Both Crainic and
Ionescu claimed to speak on behalf of Orthdoxy, although Ionescu in particular
frequently distinguished between ‘Orthodoxy’ and the actions of the ROC.58
Orthodoxist polemics encouraged hostile reactions from Catholics, and in 1927
the French Catholic writer Henri Massis defended Western philosophy against
what he called the ‘German-Asian-Russian’ irrationalism of Orthodoxists like
Ionescu and Crainic.59
Ionescu became embroiled in a bitter debate with the Catholic theologian Iosif
Frollo over the relationship between Catholicism and Romanian-ness in 1930.
In a discussion about the sister of the writer Cezar Petrescu, Ştefania Petrescu,
who had recently converted to Catholicism and entered a convent, Iuliu Scriban
used the pages of Cuvântul to argue that ‘whoever turns to Catholicism ceases
to be a good Romanian, and if one enters the monastic life then one becomes
perverted to the highest degree so as to become the most dangerous enemy of
the Romanian nation’.60 Frollo responded by listing prominent Greek Catholics
from the eighteenth century whose work had been foundational for the ideology
of Romanian nationalism, asking rhetorically, ‘can a Catholic therefore not be
a “good Romanian”?’.61 No, said Ionescu, ‘no one can be Romanian … unless
one achieves concretely, individually, the organizing spiritual structure on the
basis of which is the essence of the Romanian nation’.62 As Chris Davis points
out, Ionescu’s argument was that ‘people’s attitude toward God, and the ways in
which they experience divinity, were interwoven in the nation’s fabric’.63
With the ROC now confirmed as the ‘dominant’ Church in the nationstate, Orthodoxists such as Crainic and Ionescu sought to use their particular
brand of Orthodoxy to dominate Romanian culture. By defining ethnicity in
religious terms, the Orthodoxists placed religion at the heart of Romanianness. In privileging religion, they gave themselves a privileged place in the
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
Romina Surugiu, ‘Nae Ionescu on Democracy, Individuality, Leadership and Nation: Philosophical
(Re)sources for a Right-Wing Ideology’, Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 8, no. 23
(2009): 68–81.
Nae Ionescu, ‘Ortodoxia răsăriteană şi pancreştinismul’, Cuvântul, 2 May 1926, 1; Nae Ionescu, ‘Tot
despre Facultatea Chişinăului’, Cuvântul, 24 September 1926, 1; both republished in Nae Ionescu,
Roza vânturilor (Bucharest: Editura Roza Vînturilor, 1990), 3–5, 29–33.
Vanhaelemeersch, Generation ‘Without Beliefs’, 120–1.
Iuliu Scriban, ‘Călugărițele catolice nu-și lasă năravul’, Cuvântul, 1930, quoted in Davis, Hungarian
Religion, 54.
Iosif Frollo, ‘Scrisoare deschisă cătră S.S. Arhimandritul Scriban’, Cuvântul, 1930, quoted in ibid., 55.
Nae Ionescu, ‘A fi “bun român”’, Cuvântul, 1930, quoted in ibid., 55.
Ibid., 56.
Catholics
99
creation of Romanian culture: only they, and not eugenicists, social scientists
or bureaucrats truly knew how to reinvigorate Romania. Defining the status of
Catholicism thus mattered as much to the Orthodox Church as it did to the
Catholic churches. Whereas for the Catholics the concordat was a matter of
securing their legal rights in a country where they now found themselves in
the minority, for the Orthodox it was about determining which discourses and
ideologies would shape the church’s future. The idea that nationality should be
determined in terms of religion resonated perfectly with the state’s drive to unite
the population around the idea of Romanian ethnic dominance, thus securing
state support for the persecution of religious minorities. Whatever regional
tensions remained in the wake of unification were largely put aside in the face
of the greater dangers apparently posed by Catholics and Repenters. When it
came to securing Orthodox dominance over other religious groups, even those
bishops who had most passionately argued in favour of autonomy were more
than willing to work together with the state to guarantee Orthodox hegemony
in Greater Romania.
100
6
Repenters
Whereas Inochentists and Old Calendarists rejected the official Church by
grounding themselves in recognizably Orthodox patterns of piety, Repenters
abandoned Orthodoxy altogether for a personal Saviour who promised them
eternal life.1 They called each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, cherished the Bible
above all else and withdrew from ‘worldly’ things in their pursuit of holiness.
Repenter groups appeared in Romania during the second half of the nineteenth
century and spread in various parts of the country. Some claimed simply to
follow ‘the Repenter religion’, but most clearly affiliated themselves with one
denomination or another.2 The spectre of Repenters appeared constantly
in Orthodox writings from the 1920s, giving the impression that they were
to be found knocking on doors in every village and town. In reality, the
number of Repenters at this time was remarkably small, and their presence
restricted to only some parts of the country. Baptists were strongest in Arad
and Bihor counties, according to the 1930 census, with significant communities
throughout western Transylvania and Bessarabia. Dorin Dobrincu writes that
‘in 1921 the Baptist Union numbered 21,193 members (14,000 Romanians, 6,223
Hungarians, 670 Germans, and 300 Russians), congregated in 645 churches …
There were 77 ordained pastors … and 668 unordained leaders’.3 Romania’s
estimated population in 1920 was 16 million, meaning that Baptists constituted
roughly 0.001 per cent of the population.4 Brethren were concentrated most
strongly in Teleorman, Suceava and Iaşi, although one could also find them in
1
2
3
4
A thorough overview of the literature on Repenters can be found in Michelson, ‘The History of
Romanian Evangelicals’, 191–234.
Fond MCA, Dosar 178/1923, f. 48.
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 94.
Direcţia Generală a Statistice, Anuarul statistic al României 1922, 20.
102
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Muntenia and Bukovina. Pentecostals and Nazarenes, on the other hand, were
restricted primarily to the Banat and western Transylvania during the inter-war
period.5
Baptists
The largest and most visible of the Repenter churches were the Baptists. The
first Baptist church was established in Amsterdam in 1609 by English separatists
angry at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s suppression of reformist Puritanism.
During the 1640s Baptists embraced the idea of believer’s baptism by immersion,
meaning that only people who are old enough to understand the significance
of their actions should be baptized and that it should be done by immersing
the entire person in water to symbolize them dying and rising from the dead.6
Believer’s baptism became one of the trademarks of the Baptist faith alongside
beliefs that Christians are saved by faith alone, that the Bible is the only reliable
authority in matters of religion and that congregations should be allowed to
govern themselves.
A Baptist pamphlet from 1905 Romania explained that ‘God makes himself
known to men through the books of the Bible, giving them everything they need
to organize faith and life’. Although God created men
in his image and likeness … through Satan’s cunning the first man fell into sin.
Turning away from God he lost the image and likeness of his maker and thus
became mere flesh, existing in a state of spiritual death. Given that all men come
from the seed of Adam we all partake of his nature, which is totally depraved and
sinful. As children of hostility, conceived and born in sin, we oppose everything
that is good and, despite ourselves, we seek that which is evil.7
Although he is fully God, Jesus Christ took on the form of sinful man for us,
suffering and dying on the cross. ‘He sacrificed himself for us body and soul,
becoming a curse for us when he took the anger of God upon himself as
punishment for our sins. We believe that this act of redemption, which has
5
6
7
Nicolae Geantă, ‘Dinamica teritorială a bisericilor evanghelice din România’, in Omul evanghelic: O
explorare a comunităţilor protestante româneşti, ed. Dorin Dobrincu and Dănuţ Mănăstireanu (Iaşi:
Polirom, 2018), 536–44.
Stephen Wright, The Early English Baptists, 1603–49 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006).
Fassiunea credinţei şi (întocmirea iei): Pentru adunările creştine, cari de comun pórtă numirea de
adunări baptiste, trans. Georgiu Slăvŭ, 2nd edn (n.p.: n.p., 1905).
Repenters
103
eternal value, is the only reason why … all of our sins and transgressions are
forgiven and atoned for for all eternity.’ Of God’s absolutely free will he ‘chooses
those sinners who, as individuals, accept his offer of salvation and make it
their own during their lifetimes, thus inscribing their names in heaven and
giving themselves into the hands of the Saviour’. God’s choice is ‘eternal and
unchangeable’ once he has made it, and ‘those who he has chosen will never be
taken out of Christ’s hands. Rather, through the power of God, through faith in
Christ, and through love they will be kept for eternal glory.’ ‘This is salvation’,
the pamphlet said,
that man, through the living and active word of God awakens from the sleep of
death, recognizes his sins and transgressions, is sorry for them and contrite at
heart. Feeling Christ’s sufferings, he hastens to escape by taking hold of Christ,
the only way to salvation and redemption, thus receiving through faith the
forgiveness of his sins and faith in his heart that he is a child of God and a
partaker of eternal life.8
Baptists heard this message in weekly or twice-weekly sermons, proclaimed
it in song, preached it to each other during Bible studies, reminded
themselves of it in their prayers, told it to their neighbours and discovered
it in the Scriptures. They believed that individuals had to make a conscious
choice to accept Jesus’s offer of eternal life, so they rejected the baptism into
the Orthodox Church they had received when they were babies. Confident
that Jesus’s death and resurrection had saved them once and for all, they
no longer felt that they needed to confess to a priest. Discovering that they
understood the Bible when they read it for themselves and disappointed that
they had never heard this message of salvation from their priests, they stopped
trusting the Orthodox Church to interpret Scripture for them. Excited that
they could pray directly to God as his beloved children, they stopped praying
to the saints or venerating icons and relics. They also refused to pray to the
Virgin Mary and held up Protestant missionaries as their heroes in place of
the saints who populated the Romanian national pantheon. Striving to live
the holiest lives possible, they cut themselves off from the rest of society,
shunning alcohol, smoking, swearing and sex outside of marriage, and looked
with suspicion on things such as cinema and novels that did not have a
religious purpose.
8
Fassiunea credinţei şi (întocmirea iei).
104
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Baptist churches were established in North America during the midseventeenth century. The Baptist Missionary Society was founded in 1792,
which formed the basis for the international expansion of the movement.9
A preacher by the name of Johann Gerhard Onken founded the first Baptist
church in Germany in 1834 and then baptized the first Swiss Baptists in 1847.
Baptist churches appeared in Vienna, Denmark and Sweden during the 1840s,
in Bohemia and Hungary during the 1870s and in Bulgaria during the 1880s.
They faced persecution in almost every country they found themselves, but the
Church continued to grow due to the tenacious efforts of dedicated preachers and
a growing acceptance of the idea of religious freedom.10 It was ethnic Germans in
Congress Poland who first introduced Baptist teachings into the Russian Empire
during the 1850s. Ten years later ethnic Russians from Transcaucasia who were
members of a sect known as Molokans or ‘Spiritual Christians’ began forming
Baptist churches. Also in the 1860s, another new religious movement known as
Shtundism appeared in previously Orthodox villages in the Ukraine. Shtundism
grew organically out of interactions between Orthodox peasants and German
Protestant colonists. Shtundists became known for their ‘Bible circles’ during
which they discussed Bible passages and encouraged each other to live holy lives.
Another reformist group, the Pashkovites, spread through St Petersburg’s upper
classes during the 1870s and, after tentative attempts at collaboration during the
1880s, the Baptists, Shtundists and Pashkovites increasingly decided that their
movements were so similar that they should make common cause and organize
together as Baptists. Tensions between different strands of Baptism continued
throughout the movement’s early decades but the faith spread quickly and
created deep roots in tight local communities.11
The Baptist faith came to Romania from a variety of directions. Karl
Johann Scharschmidt, who had been baptized by Onken in Hamburg, arrived
in Bucharest in 1856 and a small Baptist church developed around him over
the following decade. At first it was composed entirely of ethnic Germans, but
ethnic Romanian converts joined during the mid-1890s. In Dobruja the Baptist
church was established by German migrants who came from southern Russia
9
10
11
William H. Brackney, Baptists in North America: A Historical Perspective (Malden: Blackwell,
2006), 8–23; Brian Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792–1992 (Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark, 1992).
James Henry Rushbrooke, The Baptist Movement in the Continent of Europe (London: The Carey
Press, 1923).
Coleman, Russian Baptists; Zhuk, Russia’s Lost Reformation; Catherine Wanner, Communities of the
Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 21–35.
Repenters
105
during the 1860s. These congregations gradually increased in size, adding
Romanian converts who in turn established their own communities. Although
their numbers always remained tiny compared to their presence in the Orthodox
press, the Baptist faith was well established in Romania by the early twentieth
century. The creation of Greater Romania brought even more Baptists into the
fold. Strong Baptist communities existed in Bessarabia, where they had been
influenced by the Shtundists, and Baptists in Transylvania had enjoyed a limited
degree of state recognition prior to war.12
Despite the strength of the Baptist Church in the Russian empire, Baptist beliefs
emerged out of Christian experiences in Western Europe and the United States
and most Romanians saw them as fundamentally foreign. Dănuţ Mănăstireanu
argues that twentieth-century Romanian Evangelicalism – a movement in which
the Baptists held a central place – was influenced by the Reformation teachings
of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Anabaptism, seventeenth-century Pietism
and the brand of nineteenth-century Christian rationalism combined with
Biblical literalism and dispensationalism that eventually gave birth to American
Fundamentalism.13 Baptists did not particularly care whether their message was
‘Romanian’ or not. They saw these as universal ideas that applied to everyone
regardless of their ethnic origins. Nonetheless, as Iemima Ploşcariu has argued,
Baptists and other Repenters went out of their way to emphasize their loyalty
to the Romanian nation and state. Despite Orthodoxist claims to the contrary,
Baptists desperately wanted to be ‘good Romanians’.14
During the early twentieth century Repenters were characterized more by
their enthusiasm than by their theological training. When a Baptist child from
Jegălia died in 1909, no one in the community knew how to run a funeral so
they had to send for a preacher from Cernavodă. Confronted by the ridicule
of Orthodox family members who were horrified that they would bury
someone without a priest, the small group carried the child to the cemetery
singing hymns and eventually brought the whole village out for the funeral.15
Early Baptist gatherings sometimes just involved members reading passages of
the Bible out loud. Over time one or two began explaining the readings and
12
13
14
15
Popovici, Istoria baptiştilor, vol. 1, 17–179; Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 42–64.
Dănuţ Mănăstireanu, ‘Identitatea evanghelicilor români: rădăcini, actualitate, perspective’, in Omul
evanghelic: O explorare a comunităţilor protestante româneşti, ed. Dorin Dobrincu and Dănuţ
Mănăstireanu (Iaşi: Polirom, 2018), 256–64.
Ploscariu, ‘Pieties of the Nation’.
Popovici, Istoria baptiştilor, vol. 1, 118–19.
106
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
drawing practical lessons from them, and people became preachers simply
through practice.16 Regular Bible reading was extremely important. To help
people discover the whole Bible, Baptist newspapers would publish daily reading
guides with specific passages recommended for morning and evening reading.17
Many communities struggled to be allowed to register their leaders as preachers
or to have their children taught religion by Baptists because the state required
that people occupying these positions had either graduated from a recognized
theological institute or passed their baccalaureate exams.18 Few Baptists had.
Dorin Dobrincu writes that
the Baptists had 909 preachers at the beginning of 1927 with the following levels
of education: one had university studies, four secondary school, three higher
agricultural school, one business school, one four classes of middle school and
trade school, six four classes of middle school, and three pedagogical school.
Similarly, seven had attended seminary and three a school/Bible course/
theological course. The vast majority (880) of preachers had only primary school
although they had served in the church for many years.19
Instead, Baptists trained preachers through ‘Bible courses’ that might last
anything from a couple of days to nine months.20 Before a seminary was built in
Bucharest in 1923, preachers who wanted further training travelled to seminaries
in Budapest or Hamburg.21
Baptists spread their message through person-to-person evangelism and by
inviting people to witness their church services where they would experience
singing, prayers and preaching.22 Weddings, funerals and baptisms were
particularly good occasions for evangelism because they attracted extended
family members, and Baptist newspapers reported that these events were ‘a good
witness’ or that non-Baptists had been converted.23 Stories about conversion
experiences that testified to radical changes having taken place in believers’ lives
provided the pivot around which evangelistic messages were structured.24 In
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Ibid., 191.
‘Un text din Sft. Scriptură pentru fiecare zi’, Farul mântuirei, December 1923, 11.
ANIC, Fond Ministerul Instrucţiunii, Dosar 310/1923, f. 305.
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 97.
Ilie Craiovean, ‘Cursul biblic din Reveţis’, Farul mântuirei, December 1923, 12.
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 97–9.
ANIC, Fond Direcţia Generală a Poliţiei (henceforth DGP), Dosar 44/1938, f. 18.
‘Botezuri’ and ‘Căsătorii’, Farul mântuirei, January 1923, 7–8.
Heather Coleman, ‘Becoming a Russian Baptist: Conversion Narratives and Social Experience’,
Russian Review 61, no. 1 (2002): 94–112; Mihai Curelaru, ‘Convertirea religioasă în comunităţile
evanghelice – o abordare psihologică’, in Omul evanghelic: O explorare a comunităţilor protestante
româneşti, ed. Dorin Dobrincu and Dănuţ Mănăstireanu (Iaşi: Polirom, 2018), 602–40.
Repenters
107
addition to Bibles and tracts, they printed their own newspapers that contained
information about local communities as well as articles of a devotional or
theological nature.25 Itinerant preachers worked as colporteurs, or travelling
book salesmen, distributing Repenter literature as a way of supporting their
preaching journeys.26
The first Baptist hymn book in Romanian was printed in 1897. It contained
200 songs, but the translations focused more on doctrine than on rhyme, so
the words were not always easy to sing. Some communities relied entirely on
Orthodox or Greek Catholic song books as people were more used to this
style of worship.27 Repenters were willing to use song books produced by other
denominations, and their music was influenced by a broad range of Protestant
currents, including hymns from German Pietism, English Puritanism,
Methodism, Gospel music and songs associated with the Salvation Army and
the ministries of Dwight L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey.28 Music became one of
the most recognizable features of Repenter gatherings. As Marin Marian-Bălaşa
argues, ‘music does not just express identity, it creates it’, and foreign musical
influences helped define Repenters as distinctively ‘non-Romanian’ in the
popular imagination.29
Romanian Baptist churches in the United States established close
contacts with their co-religionists inside the country. They sent literature
and missionaries, and local congregations stayed in touch with Romanian
students who went to study in America.30 The most important international
contact Baptists had was James Henry Rushbrooke, a British pastor who
served as the European Commissioner of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA)
from 1920 to 1925, as the Secretary for Eastern Europe from 1925 to 1928, as
General Secretary from 1928 to 1939 and then as President from 1939 until
his death in 1947.31 Rushbrooke visited Romania together with Charles Alvin
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Popovici, Istoria baptiştilor, vol. 1, 204–19.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 12388, vol. 18, f. 1; Dosar 13408, vol. 1, ff. 160–2, 168.
Ibid., 195–6.
Vilmos Kis-Juhász and Iulian Teodorescu, ‘Bazele închinării evanghelice – Cazul evanghelicilor din
România’, in Omul evanghelic: O explorare a comunităţilor protestante româneşti, ed. Dorin Dobrincu
and Dănuţ Mănăstireanu (Iaşi: Polirom, 2018), 726–33.
Marin Marian-Bălaşa, ‘Muzica în cadrul bisericilor minore: Funcţii, identităţi şi roluri socioculturale’,
in Omul evanghelic: O explorare a comunităţilor protestante româneşti, ed. Dorin Dobrincu and
Dănuţ Mănăstireanu (Iaşi: Polirom, 2018), 714.
‘La Universitatea Denison’, Farul mântuirei, December 1923, 10.
Marius Silveșan and Vasile Bel, Rolul lui James Henry Rushbrooke în obținerea libertății religioase
pentru credincioșii baptiști din România între anii 1907–1947 (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Risoprint,
2017), 27–9.
108
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Brooks of the American Baptist Home Mission Society in 1920. The two men
were on a ‘fact-finding mission’ to ascertain the state of Baptist churches in
Europe in the wake of the First World War. Their report emphasized how
badly the war had devastated Europe – and Eastern Europe in particular –
calling on Baptists in Britain and the United States to send material aid to
Germany as well as to the rest of the Continent. Rushbrooke was particularly
upset about the extent to which Baptists were being persecuted in Romania
and they dedicated twelve pages of the report to describing beatings at the
hands of police, closed churches and confiscation of buildings and literature.
A Romanian delegation to the 1920 BWA conference in London attempted
to bring detailed evidence of these atrocities but it was confiscated at the
border.32 Rushbrooke made up to seventeen visits to Romania and tirelessly
lobbied both the Romanian and British governments and other churches
to introduce religious freedom, thus providing Baptists with a voice at the
highest levels of government.33
Baptists were the only Repenter denomination that enjoyed this sort of
international support. They were also the only denomination to organize
effectively on a national level. Despite frequent infighting, the establishment
of the Baptist Union of Romania in 1920 provided them with a representative
body that could intervene with the authorities on behalf of persecuted local
congregations.34 Official representation was important because Repenters
enjoyed almost no rights under the law. A State Ordinance from 1921 denied
them the right to worship and the 1923 constitution failed to recognize any
Repenter denominations as churches. Laws were often inconsistent and
confusing, such as the 1927 legislation that defined Baptists in Transylvania
as a denomination because they had been recognized as such in Hungary but
Baptists elsewhere in the country only as members of religious associations.35
32
33
34
35
Bernard Green, Tomorrow’s Man: A Biography of James Henry Rushbrooke (Didcot: The Baptist
Historical Society, 1997), 73–9, 211 n. 14.
Ibid., 88–110, 148–70; Silveşan and Bel, Rolul lui James Henry Rushbrooke; Robert S. Wilson, ‘Coming
of Age: The Post-War Era and the 1920s’, in Baptists Together in Christ, 1905–2005: A Hundred Year
History of the Baptist World Alliance, ed. Richard V. Pierard (Birmingham, AL: Samford University
Press, 2005), 47–72.
ANIC, Fond Ministerul Instrucţiunii, Dosar 1922/29, f. 120; Dosar 289/1924, f. 7. On the history of
the Baptist Union, see Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 94–7; Popovici, Istoria Baptiştilor, vol. 2,
288–94.
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 91–3; Green, Tomorrow’s Man, 151–2.
Repenters
109
Brethren
The Brethren (Creştini după Evanghelie) were the second largest Repenter
denomination. The Brethren faith emerged out of meetings of non-conformist
Protestants in Ireland during the late 1820s. Over the next decade it established
important hubs in Plymouth, England, and Geneva, Switzerland.36 The
movement experienced a number of schisms, but it was a Swiss missionary
from the ‘Open Brethren’, Francis Berney, who brought the faith to Romania
in 1899. After planting a church in Bucharest, Berney was joined by an English
missionary, Edmund Hamer Broadbent, and together they carried out missions
among ethnic Germans in southern Transylvania in 1902–3. The faith then
spread organically within Moldova when soldiers and refugees from the Old
Kingdom concentrated there during the First World War.37
Brethren placed a strong emphasis on personal prayer, regular Bible study
and holy living. Their most distinctive feature was that they rejected the idea of
pastors or any organizational structures above the level of the local congregation,
preferring to be governed by a loose configuration of ‘elders’ – usually older
men who were well regarded within the church community. Congregations
were affiliated with one another through fraternal bonds and membership of the
Church was defined by whether or not one was allowed to receive the Eucharist,
not through any formal Church structures.38 When the state demanded that the
Brethren demonstrate that they had some sort of church hierarchy in order to
receive permission to function, the Brethren decided ‘after much prayer and
deliberation’ that they would prefer to remain outside of the law and suffer the
consequences rather than appoint official leaders.39
Brethren were also known for the doctrine of dispensationalism, which
was first developed by the Brethren pioneer John Nelson Darby. Unlike other
early Brethren preachers who taught that the Rapture and Christ’s Second
Coming would take place after a seven-year period of tribulation, Darby
36
37
38
39
Massimo Introvigne, The Plymouth Brethren (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 18–60.
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 64–70; Ieremia Rusu, Cine sunt Creştinii după Evanghelie? Curente
teologice care au influenţat doctrinele specific ale Bisericilor Creştine după Evanghelie din România în
perioada interbelică şi comunistă (Bucharest: Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică, 2011).
Eugen Matei, ‘Teologia evanghelicilor români: Rădăcini şi perspective’, in Omul evanghelic: O
explorare a comunităţilor protestante româneşti, ed. Dorin Dobrincu and Dănuţ Mănăstireanu (Iaşi:
Polirom, 2018), 433–41.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 13408, vol. 2, f. 34–5.
110
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
argued that the rapture could take place at any time.40 Darby’s particular brand
of Brethren theology was not the one that first arrived in Romania, but his
dispensationalism was strong in Brethren circles between the wars.41 In practical
terms, the knowledge that the Rapture could take place at any time encouraged a
‘watchfulness’ and served as an impetus for holy living because one did not want
to be caught sinning when Christ returned.
Rather than entrusting preaching to one person with theological training,
Brethren elders preached according to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
They never established seminars or Bible schools in Romania during the
inter-war period, although several leaders studied at Brethren seminaries in
Switzerland and Germany and some Orthodox priests with theology degrees
joined the movement during the 1920s. The Brethren also published their own
newspapers and magazines, which disseminated Brethren doctrines to scattered
communities.42 A police report from 1930 stated that in Braşov Brethren
‘preachers and colporteurs traverse the town and villages selling different
religious literature. They use these occasions to make speeches and convert the
weakest [members of society]. These sects are sustained by money donated by
their followers and from the sale of literature. Every year these sectarians are
visited by foreign missionaries who make propaganda speeches for their sects.’43
Police reports listing the members of Brethren communities suggest that women
were in the majority in most churches.44 As did all Repenter denominations,
the Brethren insisted on clear gender roles for men and women. Only men
were allowed to preach or exercise leadership and women were to display their
subordination by covering their heads and not wearing jewellery or make-up.
There was little that was remarkable about these rules for Romanian Christians,
however, and none of the anti-sectarian literature ever commented on Repenter
gender roles.
40
41
42
43
44
Timothy C. F. Stunt, ‘John Nelson Darby: Contexts and Perceptions’, in Protestant Millennialism,
Evangelicalism, and Irish Society, 1790–2005, ed. Crawford Gribben and Andrew R. Holmes
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 83–98.
Matei, ‘Teologia evanghelicilor români’, 441.
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 101–2.
ANIC – Braşov, Fond Chestura de Poliţie Braşov, Serv. Siguranţei, Dosar 4/1930, f. 691.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 13408, vol. 1, ff. 293–8; vol. 2, f. 205–6.
Repenters
111
Nazarenes
The founding father of the Nazarenes, Samuel Heinrich Fröhlich, writes that
in April 1825, during the Easter vacation from his second year of theological
studies at the University of Basel, ‘a very soft voice, which was neither terrifying
nor depressing but nevertheless very convincing and penetrating, spoke in
the depth of my soul, “It cannot remain thus with thee. Thou must change!”’.45
With a new passion for personal holiness and renewal, Fröhlich returned to
his studies temporarily but had to leave university in October for financial
reasons. He became a minister in the Swiss Reformed Church in 1828 but was
expelled in 1830 for refusing to accept new liturgical reforms, which he said
were based ‘upon the underlying principles of nature and upon the religion of
reason rather than upon faith in Christ’.46 Fröhlich then embraced the doctrine
of believer’s baptism and worked with the Baptist Continental Society between
1831 and 1836 before establishing the Neutäufer movement, also known as the
Communities of Evangelical Baptists (Evanghelisch Taufgesinnter Gemeinden).
The new Church emphasized the importance of repentance and holiness to the
point of believing that Christians must be entirely perfect. Fröhlich wrote that
when they are born again, Christians
Receive, in addition to our cleansed human nature, the divine nature of the
Son (Romans 8; 2 Peter 1); and as regenerated children of God we must in
our following after Christ, earn our share in the future glory like Jesus, i.e., we
must become worthy of it by our obedience to the will of God in our efforts and
sufferings, although it is to Him alone that we owe our share in the salvation,
because of his obedience to death on the cross. But if we are not faithful and do
not suffer with Him and conquer the world and the devil, remaining constant
unto the end, then we cannot be raised to glory with Him, although He died for
us (2 Timothy 2:10ff; Romans 8:17ff).47
From the late 1830s onward, the Neutäufer movement spread across Switzerland,
Alsace and southern Germany as well as through the Hungarian regions of the
Habsburg Empire. Increasingly known as Nazarenes, communities of Fröhlich’s
45
46
47
Quoted in Joseph F. Pfeiffer, ‘Between Remnant and Renewal: A Historical and Comparative Study
of the “Apostolic Christian Church” among Neo-Anabaptist Renewal Movements in Europe and
America’ (MA diss., Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana, 2010), 53.
Ibid., 59.
Quoted in ibid., 70.
112
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
followers consolidated in Hungary under the leadership of Louis Hencsey
in particular, including converts from Roman Catholicism, the Hungarian
Reformed Church, Slovak Lutheranism and Serbian Orthodoxy.48 The
denomination spread to the United States in 1847 where it became known as the
Apostolic Christian Church of America.49 A second wave of Nazarene migrants
fled to America to escape communist persecution following the Second World
War.50 Non-resistance became a core feature of Nazarene teaching during the
second half of the nineteenth century, bringing them closer to traditional
Anabaptist teachings while exposing them to increased state persecution
because of their refusal to bear arms.51
A number of Nazarenes became Romanian citizens following the territorial
shifts after the First World War. The Romanian state soon classified them as
Repenters and took a decidedly hostile attitude towards them. One police report
stated:
This sect, originally known as ‘the New Church’ and later as ‘the Nazarene
community’, adopting the name of Nazarenes because they confess that they
seek to follow Christ the Nazarene in their life and actions. This sect originates
among the Hungarians and entered Romania following the union with the
Transylvanian provinces. Large concentrations of the sect are in the Banat,
Bukovina, Cluj, and in Dobruja. Their doctrine consists primarily of affirming
the interior church, rejecting outward acts of religiosity. They believe in
baptizing only adults; they refuse to take oaths or serve in the military. They do
not recognize the priesthood, and they call our church ‘the old Babylon’ in the
propaganda. They hide under the name of Baptists. Their propaganda organ is
a pamphlet called The New Harlot of Zion in which they defame the church.52
The most serious quarrel that Romanian officials had with the Nazarenes was
that they would not bear arms. They pointed out that many Nazarenes had
refused to fight for Austria-Hungary during the First World War and had even
been executed for it.53 Nazarenes responded that their faith actually made them
ideal citizens, because ‘we submit to all the obligations of citizenship and wish
48
49
50
51
52
53
Aleksov, Religious Dissent, 87–116.
Aleksandra Djurić-Milovanić, ‘“Our Father is Good, but Strict”: The Transformation of the
Apostolic Christian Church-Nazarene in North America’, Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist
Studies 6, no. 1 (2018): 61–72.
Perry Klopfenstein, Marching to Zion: A History of the Apostolic Christian Church of America, 2nd
edn (Eureka, IL: Apostolic Christian Church of America, 2008).
Pfeiffer, ‘Between Remnant and Renewal’, 91–2.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 10727, vol. 2, f. 3.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 136/1922, ff. 1, 5, 21.
Repenters
113
to contribute to the consolidation and happiness of the national Romanian
state with our modest abilities. Our faith teaches us not to ruffle even a hair
on anyone’s head. We preach true love for one’s neighbour in our Lord Jesus
Christ.’54 Nazarenes operated with a different vision of the state to that of the
police. Whereas the Nazarenes believed that the state should leave them alone so
long as they obeyed its laws, the modern nation-state expected them to become
active supporters of its ideological programme of national chauvinism, which is
something they and other Repenters were not always willing to do.55
Pentecostals
The Pentecostal movement was characterized by speaking in tongues, a focus on
supernatural healing, a literal reading of the Bible and a strong emphasis on holy
living. It had its roots in the Holiness movement, Protestant faith healing and
the revivalism of the Keswick convention in England, but as a denomination it
emerged out of a series of charismatic revivals in North America, Wales, India
and Korea at the beginning of the twentieth century. The most famous of these
revivals took place at Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California, between 1906 and
1915.56 Pentecostalism arrived in the western Balkans almost immediately after
the Azusa Street revival began.57
In Romania there were reports of Pentecostals in Moldavia as early as
1908 and the first Pentecostal church was established in Bukovina in 1918 by
individuals who had encountered Pentecostalism while serving on the Eastern
Front during the First World War. Other Romanians discovered Pentecostalism
in the United States through various preachers, including the founder of the
International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, Aimee Semple McPherson,
whose healing meetings in Los Angeles made her a household name in
America.58 As a denomination centred around faith healing and speaking in
tongues, Pentecostalism was usually spread by people who had experienced
54
55
56
57
58
Ibid., f. 6. They added that, although they did teach people not to bear arms, the choice to do so was
an individual one and so the Nazarene denomination as a whole should not be punished for it. Ibid.,
f. 21.
See ibid., Dosar 178/1923, f. 114.
Allan Heaton Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014), 19–39.
Driton Krasniqi, ‘The Development of Pentecostalism in South-Eastern European Nations:
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia’, in European
Pentecostalism, ed. William K. Kay and Anne E. Dyer (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 205–24.
Bălăban, Istoria bisericii pentecostale, 15–16; Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 70–2.
114
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
these phenomena at a Pentecostal meeting. Thus empowered, they would return
to their own communities and pray that others might experience these ‘gifts’ as
well. In Romania most early Pentecostals were converts from Baptist churches
who broke away from their local congregations to form their own churches once
they had gathered a few people who were enthusiastic about this new style of
worship.59
Two of the earliest Pentecostal leaders in Romania were a husband and wife,
Gheorghe and Persiada Bradin, who had left their local Baptist church because
of doctrinal differences. In 1923 they heard about ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’
and wrote to Romanian Baptists in Cleveland asking for details. Their friends
in America sent them a pamphlet and they prayed to be baptized in the Holy
Spirit. Persiada Bradin had been suffering from tuberculosis and water retention
for three years. She received gifts of prophecy and speaking in tongues as well
as being miraculously healed. The couple subsequently established a Pentecostal
church in their village of Pauliş, in Arad county. From here Pentecostalism
spread throughout the country until by 1931 they could claim 169 churches with
a total of 3,560 members. The Bradins preached a particularly strict doctrine of
holiness and separation from ‘the world’, to the extent that early Pentecostals
did not wear ties and shaved their heads to avoid becoming proud of their
appearance.60
Pentecostal congregations were typically smaller than most Baptist or
Brethren churches during the inter-war period and police reports suggest
that the average member was relatively younger.61 In addition to preachers,
Pentecostals also recognized prophets, presbyters, deacons and deaconesses
in their churches, each of which had clearly defined roles to play in making
the church function.62 Although every Christian receives gifts of wisdom,
knowledge and faith, Pentecostals argued, not everyone will be able to speak in
tongues or heal people. Whether or not an individual received such a gift was at
the discretion of the Holy Spirit.63
The authorities were initially quite worried about the impact of Pentecostalism
on society. A circular from the Ministry of the Interior from 1934 asked local
police to report
59
60
61
62
63
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 12388, vol. 21, f. 43; Dosar 10727, vol. 2, ff. 7–8.
Bălăban, Istoria bisericii pentecostale, 18–19; Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 72–9.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 12388, vol. 21, f. 16.
Scurta expunere a principiilor de credinţă a “Bisericii lui Dumnezeu Apostolice” (Penticostale) din
România (Arad: Editura Vestitorul Evangheliei, 1947), 22–3.
Ibid., 19–20.
Repenters
115
1) If their belief in an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on certain people has a
disastrous impact on these believers; that is to say whether it provokes a
religious psychosis which manifests through extremely contagious psychomystical ecstasies. In other words, whether there are frequent cases of mental
illness among them.
2) If their belief in healing through prayer and anointing with oil causes them to
stop going to the doctor and reject normal sanitary measures such as refusing
to vaccinate their children, etc.
3) What the attitude of these believers is towards the authorities and the laws of
the state in general.64
All reports consistently came back saying that Pentecostals were not a threat to
law and order in any way but they were nonetheless persecuted by police to the
extent that several early Pentecostals were beaten to death.65 Not allowed to have
church buildings, they met in secret in homes with blacked-out windows, in
fields or in the mountains and at night.66
Pentecostals were aware that they were frequently misunderstood and
ridiculed, even by other Repenters.67 An exposition of their beliefs from 1947
is instructive because it shows the extent to which Pentecostal beliefs about
spiritual gifts were related to their understanding of the end times, as well as
their desire to demonstrate that this was an international phenomenon, in no
way restricted to Romania. They wrote,
Once again the Gospel is being spread among sinful people with ever greater
power. The time when the Lord Jesus will come again is drawing near,
though he cannot come until those who live on earth are made aware of
what is coming. Precisely for this reason the Lord Jesus has begun to work in
miraculous ways, raising up chosen people who are preaching the Gospel with
the passion of Christians from ages past. Humanity has begun to awaken after
ages of slumber; Christian churches based on repentance are being established
everywhere. Great works of the Holy Spirit are appearing in churches once
again. Apostolic Christianity has once again begun to move multitudes of
faithful souls with enthusiasm. The apostolic faith is beginning to work with
64
65
66
67
68
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 13408, vol. 2, f. 97.
Bălăban, Istoria bisericii pentecostale, 42–50.
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 77.
On the polemics between Pentecostals, Baptists and Brethren, see Bălăban, Istoria bisericii
pentecostale, 27–32.
Scurta expunere, 3.
116
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
the same power that it had in the time of the apostles, bringing thousands, and
hundreds of thousands of souls to the Lord Jesus.68
A schism divided Romanian Pentecostalism only a few years after the
movement began. Whereas Gheorghe Bradin led the Pentecostals in Arad, the
churches in Bukovina were led by a former Baptist pastor named Eugen Bodor.
Bodor invited the Russian and Eastern European Mission (REEM) to collaborate
in the work in Romania, but Bradin clashed with REEM’s representative, Gustav
Herbert Schmidt, an Assemblies of God missionary from Poland. Bradin
insisted that believers should wash each other’s feet before participating in the
Eucharist and that they never touch alcohol, and he differed with Schmidt over
whether there were two different types of baptism in the Holy Spirit. Bodor
and Schmidt found themselves unable to collaborate with Bradin and, despite
several attempts at reconciliation, the movement split in 1931, beginning over a
decade of infighting and factionalism.69
Seventh-Day Adventists
Seventh-Day Adventism began in the United States. In 1833 a Baptist preacher
by the name of William Miller predicted that the Second Coming of Christ
would take place on 22 October 1844, a day that came to be known as the Great
Disappointment. No one saw anything out of the ordinary happen that day, but
Ellen Gould Harmon, a Methodist, had a vision in which it was revealed that
this was when Christ began judging the dead. When he finishes he will return to
earth. James White, an itinerant preacher who later married Harmon, supported
her message and she continued having visions throughout her life. Together they
founded the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.70 The faith was first preached in
Romania during 1868 by Mihail Czechowski, a former Roman Catholic priest
who had converted to Adventism while visiting the United States. Czechowski
made only twelve converts in Piteşti, but visits from American Adventist leaders
kept the community alive. Ludvig Conradi, another American missionary,
converted several people in Cluj during the mid-1890s before helping a group
of German Adventist settlers who had moved from the Crimea to establish a
church in Constanţa county. Adventism came to Bucharest in 1904 through
69
70
Bălăban, Istoria bisericii pentecostale, 50–69; Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 105–11.
Laura L. Vance, ‘God’s Messenger: Ellen G. White’, in Female Leaders in New Religious Movements,
ed. Inga B. Tøllefsen and Christian Giudice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 29–49.
Repenters
117
Johann Ginter, an evangelist from Russia who was expelled from the country,
but not before establishing a small church and sending two Romanians – Petru
Paulini and Ştefan Demetrescu – to study at an Adventist training school in
Germany. Paulini and Demetrescu began organizing conferences in 1907 and
there were roughly 2,000 Adventists in Romania by the time they founded the
Romanian Union Conference in 1919. An Adventist press in Germany printed
Romanian-language literature between 1908 and 1920, when Adventists set up
the Adventist Publishing House in Bucharest. By 1923 the church had its own
training school in Romania.71 Adventists received state recognition in 1928 and
by 1930 they had 7,700 members, 65 ministers and 290 houses of prayer.72
A police report on Ion Solea, a preacher from Târgovişte who was arrested
in the home of Pantazică Stoica in a village 45 miles away, gives us some idea of
what Adventist gatherings looked like. ‘In the evening’, the report said,
while he was giving some advice to Mr. and Mrs. Stoica several women and
children arrived who listened to the sermon. He read several parables from Holy
Scripture, about the beggar and the poisoned bread and the sacrifice of Abraham
and Isaac and about how pork is unclean and should not be eaten. After this he
sang the usual songs which are part of their prayers.73
The fact that Solea was arrested so far from home reminds us that small, rural
Adventist communities did not always have their own ministers and underlines
the importance of travelling preachers in keeping the movement alive.74
Adventists held a number of beliefs that set them apart from Orthodox
Christians and from other Repenters. Demetrescu elaborated on these beliefs in a
1915 tract What We Adventists Believe, which focused on clarifying the differences
between Adventism and Romanian Orthodoxy. Rather than worshipping on
Sunday as other Christians did, Seventh-Day Adventists kept ‘the seventh day’ –
Saturday – holy, in accordance with the fourth Commandment. They were
happy to acknowledge the possibility that saints really were holy, but pointed
out that if this was true only God would know anyway. ‘Their holiness only
helps them’, Demetrescu wrote, ‘not helping anyone else except as an example to
71
72
73
74
Gary Land, Historical Dictionary of Seventh-Day Adventists (Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 2005),
252.
Earl A. Pope, ‘Protestantism in Romania’, in Protestantism and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia:
The Communist and Postcommunist Eras, ed. Sabrina Petra Ramet (Durham: Duke University Press,
1992), 186.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 9486, vol. 1, ff. 48–9.
Police reports often noted that Adventist communities were sustained by visiting ministers. ANIC,
Fond MCA, Dosar 131/1922, f. 14.
118
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
follow because everyone has to answer before God for their actions themselves’.
Adventists did not venerate icons, but Demetrescu insisted that they did not
ridicule the Orthodox for doing so. Moreover, they believed in a strict separation
of Church and state so they paid their ministers and did not expect state salaries,
quoting the words of 1 Corinthians 9:14 that ‘those who proclaim the gospel
should get their living by the gospel’. Demetrescu mentioned that Adventists
‘abstain completely from all forms of intoxicating drink, from smoking tobacco,
from consuming food that stimulates and weakens the nerves [i.e., meat], and
from any sort of bad habits’. ‘For us renewing our health goes hand in hand with
renewing and strengthening our faith’, he said. ‘It even constitutes the first step
in preparing us for the higher life to which the Lord Jesus has called all men:
purifying and keeping the human body healthy – this wonderful temple, the
only one in which God dwells through his Spirit – being the first step towards
a life worthy of the divine presence living in the heart of man.’ A former army
officer himself, Demetrescu denied the frequent accusations that Adventists
refused to serve in the military, as well as distancing his denomination from
both philosemitism and antisemitism. ‘Explosions of hate are and remain
proof of weakness’, he said, ‘which makes one think given that they come from
[Orthodox] church leaders in the form of pastoral letters that claim that we are
Jews who want to dominate the country spiritually. These attacks do the country
more harm than people realize.’75
Legal recognition did not always stop police and gendarmes from harassing
Adventists. As the General Secretary of the Evangelical Union of Seventh Day
Adventist Communities, Demetrescu frequently found himself writing to the
government requesting that they remind the authorities that Adventists had a
legal right to worship.76 Whenever a conflict developed between Adventists and
Orthodox Christians the police consistently sided with the Orthodox. According
to an Adventist complaint from 1923 when two drunks disturbed an Adventist
worship service in Turtucaia, the local policeman – who was already on the
scene – entered the church and began beating the preacher ‘to keep the peace’. A
few days later secret policemen disrupted another one of their services, hitting
people with their own Bibles.77 Elsewhere Adventists were imprisoned for weeks
at a time for actions such as ‘insulting the Mother of God during a funerary
75
76
77
Ştefan Demetrescu, Ce credem noi adventiştii: Răspuns calomniilor debitate despre noi de către cei
interesaţi (Bucharest: Atelierele grafice SOCEC, 1915).
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 9486, vol. 1, f. 3; ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 131/1922, ff. 36–7.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 131/1922, ff. 42–4.
Repenters
119
vigil [priveghere] in the church’.78 Adventist preachers and colporteurs were
arrested and their literature confiscated any time they were found not carrying
government-issued documents proving they had permission to preach. These
authorizations had to be stamped, contain the individual’s photograph and be
renewed every three years.79 Orthodox priests used the widespread distrust of
Repenters to make life as difficult as possible for them. The parish priest in
Alexandria wrote to the police in 1922 that
two colporteurs – Adventist propagandists – came into our town a few days ago.
They went from house to house on the pretext that they were selling Bibles but
in reality they were doing Adventist propaganda; criticizing and insulting our
church and clergy, deceiving people that they are not Adventists but ‘Orthodox
Christians’; threatening women and children that if they did not buy the books
all the punishments and plagues of Egypt would come upon them, and more.80
Although the Romanian Adventist church might have been small, it was well
organized on a regional scale, which made people suspect that Adventists were
in the pay of foreign countries.81 According to one book catalogue confiscated
by police, Adventists distributed literature in Romanian, Hungarian, Serbian,
Slovak, Russian, Polish, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Croatian, Czech, German,
French, Bulgarian, Ruthenian, Turkish and Italian.82 The police were not
particularly discerning when it came to confiscating literature and one Orthodox
bookseller wrote to the Ministry of Denominations in 1926 complaining that
they were even confiscating Bibles and religious books that had been edited by
the Ministry itself.83
Bible Students and Jehovah’s Witnesses
The founder of the Bible Students, Charles Taze Russell, was influenced by
Adventism and other Christian millenarian teachings. He worked together with
Adventist preachers in Pennsylvania before starting out on his own in 1879 with
the newspaper Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence. Russell taught
that the Christian Church had lost its way since the time of the Apostles and
78
79
80
81
82
83
Ibid., Dosar 131/1922, ff. 52–3.
Ibid., Dosar 146/1936, ff. 1–32, 186–92.
Ibid., Dosar 131/1922, f. 32.
Ibid., Dosar 131/1922, f. 73.
Ibid., Dosar 146/1936, f. 35.
Ibid., Dosar 119/1926, f. 193.
120
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
only now, through a close study of the Bible, was it returning to its true path.
His arguments found a ripe audience in late nineteenth-century America, which
soon blossomed into a robust Church.84 Russell believed that he was living in
the last days and warned that the world was entering a time of tribulation and
persecution for Christians. There is, he wrote,
a great and severe trial of faith coming with increasing force upon the church –
‘the fire of that day’ which ‘shall try every man’s work of what sort it is’. We
saw that this fiery trial then coming, aimed to destroy the very foundation of
Christian faith and hope, the first principles of the doctrine of Christ – ‘How
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures’ (1 Corinthians 15:3)
and that he thus redeemed, ransomed, bought us with his own precious blood.85
Political and social upheavals were all evidence of the birth pains of a new age,
Russell said, as were changes to the climate and the environment as the earth was
being ‘prepared’ like ‘the garden of Eden to be a fit home for perfect man’.86 Russell
rejected the concept of the Trinity, ‘an idea so absurd that its very absurdity is
taken as proof of its divine authority, though not a text of scripture can be quoted
in its support’.87 He also explained that hell would not involve eternal torment,
but ‘the tomb is spoken of as a great “prison house”, in which the captives of
death (the Adamic, or first death) await deliverance. Though dissolved in death,
the identity of each being is preserved in the mind and power of God, and will
be reproduced in due time by resurrection power’.88 Not quite understanding
this doctrine and consistently thinking in nationalist terms, Romanian police
wrote that Bible Student pamphlets taught that the souls of those who died in
the war would not go to heaven but were now disembodied spirits because they
had perished in bloodshed.89
Russell toured Europe during the 1890s. Bible Students began outreach
in Berlin in 1897, establishing an office there in 1903 and one in Warsaw in
1910. Adolf Erwin Weber began outreach in Switzerland in 1895, in Belgium
in 1901 and in France in 1906.90 Several Hungarian Bible Students returned
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
M. James Prenton, Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 3rd edn (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2015), 13–68.
‘An Inconsistent Contemporary’, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1886, 2.
‘View from the Tower’, Zion’s Watch Tower, September 1886, 1.
‘The Lord Your God Proveth You’, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1885, 7.
‘The Lake of Fire and Brimstone which is the Second Death’, Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1886, 5.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 137/1922, f. 10.
Gerhard Besier and Katarzyna Stoklosa eds, Jehovas Zeugen in Europa – Geschichte und Gegenwart:
Band 1. Belgien, Frankreich, Griechenland, Italien, Luxemburg, Niederlande, Portugal und Spanien
(Münster: Lit Verlag, 2013).
Repenters
121
to Austria-Hungary from the United States in the early years of the twentieth
century. One of these was Károly Szabó, who carried out mission work in Mureş
county from 1911 onwards.91 The movement soon established an office in Cluj,
which moved to Bucharest in 1925.92 Ilie Groza converted in 1919 and began
holding Bible studies in Bessarabia with his family, which soon expanded into a
regional movement. By 1921 they could claim 200 members in Bessarabia and
2,000 in Romania as a whole.93 Romanian Bible Students had five conditions for
membership:
1) Belief in God as the supreme, intelligent Creator and Maker of the
Universe;
2) Belief in the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Saviour of mankind
and thus the personal Saviour of each individual;
3) Belief in the inspiration of the Bible as the Word of God and an unreserved
acceptance of it as the sole belief of the Christian;
4) A complete consecration to doing God’s holy will;
5) A holy, noble, and irreproachable life.94
Each congregation was led by a group of elders who were appointed after a test
on Bible knowledge. Individuals had to answer 19 out of 22 questions correctly
before being eligible to become elders.95
Romanian-language literature was published in New York and distributed
throughout the country via the office in Cluj.96 Iacob Sima, who had returned to
Cluj from America after the war, did the Romanian translations, although they
had to pay someone to translate their literature into Hungarian.97 Police claimed
that Bible Students exploited ‘any difficult economic situation or national or
international political conflict, claiming that these problems were predicted
as the beginning of a cataclysm, following which the “Kingdom of God” will
appear, which will last one thousand years’.98 Most early missionaries had to
work full time to support their evangelism. In 1920 the American leadership
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
Tudor Petcu and Andy Besuden, ‘The History of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hungary’, Studia humana 7,
no. 2 (2018): 45–6.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 10727, vol. 1, f. 7.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 137/1922, f. 64; Emily B. Baran, Dissent on the Margins: How Soviet
Jehovah’s Witnesses Defied Communism and Lived to Preach about It (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 23–4.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 137/1922, f. 65.
Ibid., Dosar 137/1922, f. 65.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 137/1922, ff. 9–12; ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 10727, vol. 1, f. 7.
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 137/1922, f. 13; ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 10727, vol. 1, f. 13.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 10727, vol. 1, f. 7.
122
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
gave the Romanian branch a gift of $25, which was used to buy a suit for an
evangelist to wear while preaching.99
Leadership struggles wracked the movement in the United States during the
First World War. Russell’s death brought James Franklin Rutherford to power
as the uncontested leader of the movement, but not before large numbers of
people left to form their own groups in protest at Rutherford’s autocratic style.100
Romanians were largely cut off from the tensions between Russell, Rutherford
and other leaders. They remained loyal to Rutherford throughout the inter-war
period.101 In 1931 he changed the name of the Watch Tower and Tract Society to
the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which is how they are most recognizable today.102
Bible Students were harshly persecuted by police and by 1927 some groups
were meeting in the woods to avoid repression.103 Persecution was compounded
by the fact that the authorities frequently misunderstood or distorted Bible
Student teachings. In 1921 police reported that they were ‘socialist because
they are against militarism and monarchies. Their primary tendency is Judaism
[jidovismul], which is to say that everyone should celebrate Saturday because
then a great and unique people will form. Only then will the Messiah come who
has been awaited by the Jews for 6,000 years.’104 Romanian police focused in
particular on the potential political implications of their teachings, reporting
that
They teach that after Adam fell into sin, Jehovah sent angels to turn the human
nations from the rule of Lucifer; that angels have the power to take on human
bodies on earth, that they took human women as wives and gave birth to the
giants that were destroyed by God and their parents thrown into Tartar. They
also say in their propaganda that Judgement Day began in the middle of the
nineteenth century, when demons were again given the ability to take on
human bodies and gave birth to giants, who in their minds are the great kings,
statesmen, generals, scientists, and capitalists who demoralize the world. They
believe that God in his anger punishes these people with revolutions and wars.
Their doctrine is based on communism.105
Baran, Dissent on the Margins, 22.
Prenton, Apocalypse Delayed, 69–80.
101
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 137/1922, f. 13.
102
Prenton, Apocalypse Delayed, 86–7.
103
Baran, Dissent on the Margins, 24.
104
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 137/1922, f. 10.
105
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 10727, vol. 2, f. 3.
99
100
Repenters
123
Another police summary of Witness teachings from the 1930s stated that their
key doctrines were:
1) Belief in the millennium (they say that Jesus Christ will come to earth
where he will reign for a thousand years);
2) All human organization is of the devil and the rulers of countries serve the
devil;
3) Refusal to submit to the laws, which come from the devil;
4) The end of the world will come at the end of the millennium, when
everything will be destroyed and only those who believe in Jehovah will
live forever.106
Most policemen were Orthodox Christians, and they looked on Repenters with
deep mistrust. Largely convinced by arguments that to be Romanian was to
be Orthodox, they saw Repenters as traitors to the nation who were spreading
foreign propaganda. The foreign origins of these movements did little to allay
such fears. Despite the fact that most Repenters did their utmost to obey any and
every law that did not explicitly contradict their beliefs, they were consistently
persecuted by both the Church and the state throughout the inter-war period.
106
Ibid., vol. 1, f. 13.
124
7
Missionaries
Evangelical groups such as Baptists, Brethren, Pentecostals and Nazarenes
saw an enormous difference between themselves and other Repenters such as
Seventh-Day Adventists and Bible Students. The Romanian police did not. They
categorized all Repenters as criminals, together with a number of other illegal
religious movements including Inochentists and Old Calendarists. Officials
often confused the Bible Students with Nazarenes in particular, although both
movements took pains to distance themselves from each other.1 One report
from 1923 claimed that Inochentists and Adventists from Piatra village in Orhei
county became over-excited when they saw two rockets in the sky that had been
launched by a military unit nearby as part of a celebration. Believing that the
Holy Spirit had come to earth, they attacked the gendarme station, the post
office, the priest and a Jew.2 As Kapaló has shown, such reports had little basis
in reality. This one was copied almost verbatim from a sensationalist newspaper
article in Universul and the facts were not verified until five years later, when
another report confirmed that nothing of the sort had happened.3
Many of the groups that police equated with Repenters were Russian
movements such as Shtundists, Dukhobors, Molokans and Old Believers
(Lipoveni). According to the police, Reapers (Secerătorii) believed that they
were living in the last days and that Jesus would soon return to gather them to
heaven. They refused to take oaths or to serve in the military. Karaimites were
Jewish Christians who practised circumcision, Skoptsy castrated themselves
entirely and Khlysts (also known as Milenarişti) were apparently pantheists who
believed that God communicates directly with all of creation. If one believes the
police reports, they engaged in ecstatic dances to gain supernatural visions and
indulged in night-time orgies. The Swedenborgians followed the teachings of the
1
2
3
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 137/1922, ff. 13, 18.
Ibid., Dosar 177/1923, f. 9.
Kapaló, Inochentism, 156–9.
126
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg; the Quakers (Tremurătorii)
worshipped by dancing, jumping and weeping in order to gain illumination; and
the New Israelites tried to convert Christians to Judaism. Finally, Salvationism –
or the Salvation Army – ‘is a military organization with ranks, decorations,
marches, parades, etc., including uniforms for both men and women. They
conduct propaganda through singing and fanfare’.4 One heresy gave birth to
another, Vartolomeu Stănescu said, and heretics made sins into virtues, such
that Inochentists supposedly treated sexual immorality as a means of salvation.5
Convinced that Repenters were a threat to society, individual gendarmes abused
their power to prevent them receiving permission to open churches, to stop
children attending school, or arresting and beating men, women and children
attending prayer meetings.6 Particularly zealous gendarmes occasionally closed
Reformed or Lutheran churches as well, and these churches had to write to the
ministry reminding them that they were legally recognized denominations.7
The international connections Repenters enjoyed made them particularly
susceptible to accusations that they were ‘not Romanian’. Occasionally, priests
wrote entire pamphlets about the dangers of Khlysts and Mormons even though
there were very few Khlysts and no Mormons in the country.8 These pamphlets
used fear campaigns about Mormons spreading polygamy to tar all ‘sectarians’
with the same brush. Repenters in Broscăuţi, in Dorohoi county, reported that
the priest and teacher were planning to murder them and throw their bodies
into the river. Other priests encouraged their parishioners to attack Repenters,
disrupting weddings, vandalizing prayer houses and beating preachers.9
The earliest coordinated Orthodox attempt to combat Repenter Christianity
in Romania was the Romanian Orthodox Association, founded in 1885 to fight
‘foreign propaganda’, which it said was being distributed freely by Repenter
evangelists.10 During the inter-war period the Romanian Orthodox Church
(ROC) appointed anti-sectarian missionaries whose role was to work in rural
communities combating the influence of Repenters and trying to convert them
back to Orthodoxy. They produced a vast quantity of anti-sectarian writings
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 10727, vol. 2, ff. 3–6.
Vartolomeu Stănescu, ‘Ce sunt ereziile creştine şi din ce cauza se nasc ele?’ Misionarul 2, no. 6
(1930): 499.
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 116–19.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 13408, vol. 1, f. 250.
Vasile Loichiţa, Chiliasmul (Milenarismul): Expunere şi critică dogmatică (Cernăuţi: Editura
Autorului, 1926); Marin Iliescu, Poligamiea în America: Secta mormonilor: Doctrina, obieceiurile şi
istoria lor (Alexandria: Tipografia Alecsandri, 1932).
Dobrincu, ‘Sub puterea cezarului’, 121.
Ursul, ‘From Political Freedom’, 233.
Missionaries
127
attacking and defaming Repenters.11 Vasile G. Ispir was appointed Professor of
Sectology at the University of Bucharest in 1922, publishing sermons, pamphlets
and textbooks attacking Repenters and describing missionary strategies.12 In
addition to his active role as a preacher and teacher, on Sunday mornings Ispir
organized teams of students to run ‘Sunday Schools’ in primary schools on the
outskirts of Bucharest. Their goal was ‘to touch those chords of the soul which
develop in children with appropriate dispositions [simţăminte alese] and to
cultivate a noble character and a respect towards holy things’.13
Other Orthodox churches had tried similar missionary initiatives during the
nineteenth century. From 1885 onwards Serbian priests in Austria-Hungary began
holding congresses to discuss how to combat the popularity of the Nazarenes.
These were grassroots initiatives by parish priests. They began by calling for
harsher state repression, but by the mid-1890s these assemblies began looking
inward and argued that people were becoming Repenters because Orthodox
priests were not doing enough to combat the threats of Western liberalism, the
secular intelligentsia, civil servants and the press.14 Their arguments focused on
Orthodox failures, national identity and foreign threats, and the solutions they
proposed consistently involved changing Orthodoxy itself. This was as much a
debate about the relationship between Orthodoxy and modernity as it was about
actual conversions. The Russian Orthodox Church organized ‘internal missions’
between 1886 and 1917, which were specifically focused on preventing the
spread of Repenters and other non-Orthodox religions.15 Metropolitan Evlogii
11
12
13
14
15
Representative titles of this literature include Const. Nazarie, Duminica, botezul şi ierarhia
bisericească după adventişti (Bucharest: Tipografia ‘Cărţilor Bisericeşti’, 1910); Const. Gr. Chirică,
Lupi rapitori în piei de oi (Galaţi: Institutul de Arte Grafice ‘Energia’, n.d.); Ioan Cotârlă, Sf. Cruce,
Sf. Icoane, luminările şi tămâia (Arad: Tiparul Tigpografie Diecezane, 1929); Mina Gaşpar, Legea lui
Moise, sâmbăta evreilor şi duminica creştinilor (Arad: Tiparul Tigpografie Diecezane, 1929); Vasile
Gheorghiu, Despre botezul ‘cu Spirit Sfânt şi cu foc’ şi darurile harismatice (Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei
Diecezane, 1929); I. N. Dăvărescu, Feriţi-vă de adventişti şi de toţi rătăciţii vremurilor noastre!
(Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei Diecezane, 1930); Ilarion V. Felea, Critica ereziei baptiste (Sibiu, 1937);
V. Dolinescu, Lupta contra sectelor religioase (Bârlad: Atelierele Grafice N. Peiu, 1939).
Vasile Gh. Ispir, Bibliografia subiectelor tratate în Seminarul de Sectologie de sub direcţiunea d-lui
Profesor Dr. V. Gh. Ispir, în anii 1932/33, 1933/34 şi 1934/35 (Bucharest: Tipografia Ziarului, 1936);
Vasile Gh. Ispir, Curs de sectologie (Bucharest: Facultatea de Teologie din Bucureşti, 1938); Vasile Gh.
Ispir, Sectele religioase. Un pericol national şi social (Bucharest: Tipografia ‘Cărţilor Bisericeşti’, 1942).
Asociaţia Misionară a Studenţilor Creştini Ortodocşi. Zece ani de activitate (1926–1936) (Bucharest,
1936).
Aleksov, Religious Dissent, 135–41.
J. Eugene Clay, ‘Orthodox Missionaries’, 38–69; Heather J. Coleman, ‘Defining Heresy: The Fourth
Missionary Congress and the Problem of Cultural Power after 1905 in Russia,’ Jahrbücher für
Geschichte Osteuropas 52, no. 1 (2004): 70–91; Heather J. Coleman, ‘Theology on the Ground: Dmitrii
Bogoliubov, the Orthodox Anti-Sectarian Mission, and the Russian Soul’, in Thinking Orthodox in
Modern Russia: Culture, History, Context, ed. Patrick Lally Michelson and Judith Deutsch Kornblatt
(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 64–84.
128
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
wrote that ‘in the dioceses, in Church circles, [the missionaries] were feared,
but they were not loved nor were they trusted’.16 Associated with Konstantin
Pobedonostsev, the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod, the missionary
endeavour in Russia was about reinforcing a close relationship between Church
and state to prevent the spread of political dissent in any form.
Bishop Gurie Grosu established a Romanian missionary society in Bessarabia
in 1899 under the auspices of Russian anti-sectarian missions. This was equally
an attempt to distribute religious literature in the Romanian language in a region
that sorely lacked it. He reported on his efforts in 1922 that
A popular library has been established in the parish of Văncicăuţi, Hotin county.
Over twenty issues of a missionary newspaper have been edited in Romanian
and Russian, each in at least 5,000 copies. Twenty lectures have been held and
over 100 discussions and debates with sectarians in front of the people. Choirs
of priests and children from church schools were organized for these occasions.
Last autumn courses for missionary priests taught by missionary bishops were
held for over a month. A choir was formed of priests and cantors from Chişinău,
which gave several public concerts to raise money for the poor.17
Inochentism was particularly strong in Bessarabia at this time and Orthodox
missionaries focused on combating Inochentism as much as they did on
Repenters.18 There were clear continuities between the pre-war Russian
missionary movement and Romanian efforts of the 1920s. James Kapaló even
notes that ‘some of the missionary priests who had been active in the same role
in the Russian Orthodox Church continued to work for the Romanian Church’.19
Missionary priests in inter-war Romania were attached to individual bishoprics
and had no central authority directing their ministry.20 They held regular
congresses from 1928 onwards where they encouraged missionary priests and
discussed new strategies for combating Repenters.21 Grosu suggested publishing
a newspaper for the movement at the 1928 congress and began printing
Missionarul (The Missionary) on the press at Chişinău the following year.22
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Quoted in Coleman, ‘Theology on the Ground’, 65.
Anuarul Episcopiei Chişinăulu.
Kapaló, Inochentism, 56–68.
Ibid., 117.
Ic. St I. Andronic, ‘Ne trebuie un organ central de conducerea operei misionare,’ Misionarul,
6 October 1929, 39–40.
‘Într’un ceas bun’, Misionarul, 6 October 1929, 1.
Boldişor, File din viaţa unei biserici, 51–2.
Missionaries
129
Grigorie Comşa, who served as Bishop of Arad between 1925 and 1935, was
the most prolific and active of Romanian missionary priests. Most anti-sectarian
literature was published either in Arad as part of Comşa’s ‘Christian Orthodox
Library’ series (Biblioteca Creştinului Ortodox) or under the supervision of
Gurie Grosu in Chişinău, who had his own series entitled ‘The Library of the
Right-Believing Christian’ (Biblioteca Creştinului Drept-Credincios). Attacks
on Repenters could be found in almost every issue of every Orthodox Church
newspaper during the inter-war period, but Comşa almost single-handedly
shaped the Orthodox discourse on Repenters through his vitriol, his prestige
and the sheer number of his publications. In addition to providing arguments
for missionaries Comşa hoped that Repenters themselves would read his
tracts and be converted by the power of his arguments.23 According to Comşa,
‘mission includes all those things that missionaries do to proclaim the word,
to fortify believers, those wavering or indifferent to religion and morals, but
mission is also about preventing heretical diseases and forming a force of aware
and devoted believers in the Church’.24 He distinguished missionary endeavours
from the pastoral work of priests. ‘Carrying out the Holy liturgy, a baptism,
anointing the sick, a wedding or a funeral’, he said, ‘is not enough’.25 In addition,
the Church had to preach the word of God. Comşa strongly encouraged
preaching, which for him lay at the heart of the missionary endeavour.26 What
he said in his sermons depended on his audience. ‘Evangelistic letters’ that he
wrote to prominent public figures in 1934 emphasized that Christianity was
the key to a vibrant and healthy society and encouraged his correspondents
to integrate the Church ever more deeply into their professional lives.27 His
message to Orthodox believers can be summed up by his imperatives ‘to show
that Christ is the Lord of our lives, and not human foibles’ and ‘to extend the
Kingdom of God on earth without anything standing in its way’.28 His antisectarian sermons, on the other hand, identified Repenters as ‘false prophets’
and ‘lying heretics’ who must be eradicated for the safety of the Church. His
23
24
25
26
27
28
Grigorie Comşa, Combaterea catehismului baptiştilor (Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei Diecezane,
1926), 4.
Comşa, Fiinţa şi necesitatea misionarismului, 11.
Gheorghe Comşa, Istoria predicei la români (Bucharest: Tipografia Cărţilor Bisericeşti, 1921), 4.
Collection of Comşa’s own sermons include Grigorie Comşa, Predici pentru toate duminicile de peste
an şi alte ocaziuni (Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei Diecezane, 1918); Grigorie Comşa, Pentru neam şi lege:
Patruzeci cuvântări de învăţătură împotriva adventiştilor şi baptiştilor (Caransebeş: Editura ‘Librăriei
Decezane’, 1923).
Grigorie Comşa, Scrisori creştineşti (Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei Diecezane, 1934).
Grigorie Comşa, Glasul pietrelor: Principii călăuzitoare pentru ortodoxia activa (Chişinău: Tipografia
Eparhială ‘Cartea Românească’, 1931), 7, 31.
130
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
goal was ‘to tear the mask off the faces of the Adventists’, accusing Repenters of
a wide variety of dishonourable practices.29
According to Comşa, priests differed from missionaries in that they
ministered only to believers who already recognized their authority, whereas
missionaries were there to spread the Gospel. Only ordained priests were able to
do pastoral work, but laypeople could become missionaries. In 1930 students at
the University of Bucharest formed a Student Missionary Society and dedicated
their summer holidays to carrying out missionary work in rural communities.30
The goal of the missionary, Comşa said, was ‘Christianization in general, in
particular the interiorization of religious life, the deepening of Christian thought
and feeling, increasing Christian activities, [and] the discipleship of deeds’.31
Missionaries in Arad would hold three-day festivals in which they would set
up a large number of icons outside a monastery, then preach sermons, hear
confessions and administer the Eucharist.32
What missionary priests did from day to day varied considerably. Gala
Galaction fulfilled his duties as a missionary priest in Bucharest by having
Teodor Popescu defrocked as a heretic (see chapter 9).33 In a report from 1935,
Ilie Imbrescu described his first year of missionary activity in Dobruja as having
involved petitioning the patriarch for the establishment of a new monastery in
his region, holding a religious service on the location of the proposed monastery,
spending three days travelling around Repenter communities and resolving
to establish ‘centres’ where he would systematically refute Repenters in the
future.34 In Chişinău missionary priests were supposed to be active preachers,
lead collective singing in churches, give public lectures and establish missionary
circles in communities with a strong Repenter presence. They were to cooperate
with the local authorities, mobilize monasteries and religious youth groups and
distribute anti-sectarian literature.35
Missionaries in Hotin showed a film, The Life and Passions of the Saviour,
accompanied by choirs, prayers, the lighting of candles and sermons against
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
Comşa, Pentru neam şi lege, 8, 17 and passim.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 12694, vol. 3, ff. 1–4.
Comşa, Fiinţa şi necesitatea, 13.
Toma Gherasimescu, Propaganda religioasă prin cinematograf: Cum se poate face ea cu o cheltuială
foarte mică (Roman: Editura Autorului, 1930), 1.
Galaction, Jurnal, vol. 3, 158–65; Gala Galaction, Piatra din capul unghiului: Scrisori teologice
(Bucharest: Tipografiile Române Unite, 1926).
Ilie I. Imbrescu, Misionarul eparhial al Tomisului: Gânduri după un an de încercări (Bazargic: Tip.
‘Gutenberg’ Hristo Radilof, 1935), 14–16.
‘Planul activităţii misionare stabilit în eparhia Chişinăului de Secţia Culturală,’ Misionarul, 6 October
1929, 109–12.
Missionaries
131
Seventh-Day Adventism.36 Clerical reactions to new technology were mixed.
Irineu Mihălcescu, for example, welcomed the introduction of cinema into
Romania, seeing it as a possible vehicle for public education and moral teaching,
provided that it was used properly. When asked whether the liturgy should be
broadcast on the radio, however, he replied that
it is the greatest impiety, the most profound sacrilege, a true profanation …
Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to have a baptism, an unction, a wedding or an
ordination on the radio? What sort of mystery would it be if the recipient was
not there to participate in it, to see it, to receive the laying on of hands, the
blessing and other rites through which the grace of the Holy Spirit is shared?37
Most missionaries liked the idea of using films, but these were expensive to buy
and hard to transport. Suitable religious films were rare and few villages had
appropriate buildings in which to project them. It was only once Pathé-Baby
projectors were imported at the end of the 1920s that this became a realistic
option.38
Comşa wrote that when he became an assistant director at the Ministry of
Denominations in 1920 he ‘was amazed at the high number of Repenter preachers
who were requesting authorization to preach’.39 Unlike Orthodox, Greek
Catholic, Roman Catholic, Lutheran priests or Jewish rabbis, every Repenter
had to receive permission as an individual if he or she wished to preach.40 From
the perspective of a clerk this law meant that large numbers of requests from
Repenter preachers would have come across Comşa’s desk. Moreover, Comşa
said, there were many more Repenters than first met the eye because they
were often difficult to identify.41 When Imbrescu tried collecting statistics on
Repenters in Dobruja he discovered that the protopresbyters had no real idea
how many were living in their parishes.42 Comşa saw sectarianism as being a
result of ‘excessive liberty’, a natural desire to rebel against authority and the fact
that people saw the Church as representative of an oppressive socio-economic
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
‘Conferinţe misionare cu cinematograf în judeţul Hotin,’ Misionarul, 6 October 1929, 116–18.
Quoted in Vicovan, Ioan Irineu Mihălcescu, 492.
Gherasimescu, Propaganda religioasă, 2–3.
Grigorie Comşa, Zece ani de luptă împotriva baptiştilor (Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei Diecezane,
1930), 5.
Marius Silveşan, Bisericile creştine baptiste din România între persecuţie, acomodare şi rezistenţa
(1948–1965) (Târgovişte: Editura Cetatea de Scaun, 2012), 96–7.
Grigorie Comşa, Cheia sectelor religioase din România (Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei Diecezane,
1930), 1.
Imbrescu, Misionarul eparhial, 7. The police also kept statistics of Repenter communities which
were much more detailed than those Imbrescu managed to obtain from his protopresbyters.
132
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
order they wanted to escape. He argued that the Orthodox Church was in
a particularly difficult position because, despite its support for the state,
nineteenth-century reforms had successively stripped it of its wealth and now
parish priests had too many souls in their care, which is why people turned to
Repenter churches, which promised more personal pastoral care.43 Not content
to take souls away from the Orthodox Church, the Repenter emphasis on the
priesthood of all believers apparently masked their intention to do away with the
clerical class entirely even though they too had priests, known as ‘ministers’.44
Comşa repeatedly used military symbolism and references to spiritual warfare
in his writings, comparing Baptists to ‘the Yids who murdered the Author of life’
and calling missionaries ‘to arm ourselves and to join the holy war for the defence
of the faith and the Nation’.45 He claimed that ‘we never attacked, but we did defend
ourselves’.46 This is not quite true. Comşa was quite comfortable appealing to the
authorities to shut down Repenter groups and the first Pentecostal tortured to
death by police was arrested at Comşa’s instigation in 1927.47 Other Orthodox
writers admitted quite openly that missionaries frequently requested gendarmes
to repress Repenters by force.48 Missionaries targeted Greek Catholics as well
as Repenters, and in a harsh critique of Orthodox missionary methods, Greek
Catholic writers argued that
If it really believes in the true teaching ‘Go and make disciples …’ [Matthew
28:19–20], every Church is and should be like that of Rome: to seek to win souls.
‘Only those who do not believe can turn their backs on mission’, as the Most
Reverend Bălan proclaimed at the FOR [Romanian Orthodox Brotherhood]
congress. There is nonetheless an enormous difference between peaceful ‘mission’
based on conviction, enlightenment, winning people over through persuasion,
the power of the truth and good works … and demagogic proselytism, which
disturbs public order and is practiced with money and axes, with envy and
deceit, with the illegal intervention of the authorities.49
Comşa described the growth of Repenter communities in the early 1920s as a
diabolical continuation of the First World War using ‘the flaming arrows of the evil
one’ (Ephesians 6:16). Repenters, he wrote, were disgusted by the pleasure-driven
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
Comşa, Cheia sectelor religioase, 11–17; Comşa, Fiinţa şi necesitatea, 6–9.
Comşa, Combaterea catehismului, 25, 43–50.
Ibid., 18; Comşa, Glasul pietrelor, 39.
Comşa, Zece ani de luptă, 15. Note that by the following year he was demanding that ‘we need to
attack. Defence is not enough’. Comşa, Glasul pietrelor, 36.
Bălăban, Istoria bisericii penticostale, 41.
Ioan G. Savin, Iconoclaşti şi apostaţi contemporani (Bucharest: Editura Anastasia, 1995), 47.
‘Cartea frăţiei’, Unirea (1934), quoted in Kührer-Wielach, ‘Orthodoxer Jesuitismus’, 314.
Missionaries
133
society around them and wanted to create a new society, separate from the old.50
The implication here was that they also sought to separate themselves from the
nation-state. Comşa spoke about the ‘sins’ that Baptist leaders had ‘towards the
Romanian people’ (patimile ce le au faţă de neamul românesc).51 By this he meant
that converts publicly claimed their parents were irreligious, that Baptists did not
acknowledge the important contributions Orthodox Church leaders had made
to Romanian nation-building in centuries past and that they did not participate
in national celebrations. He argued consistently that Repenters ‘were a danger
to the state and to the spiritual union of Romanians’.52 Other Orthodox voices
agreed. The theologian Ioan Savin wrote in 1932 that ‘not only Orthodoxy but
nationality is targeted and under threat by sectarian propaganda’.53
Repenters were dangerous because they encouraged Romanians to mix with
Hungarians and were allowed to teach religious studies in schools when they
themselves had not graduated primary school. They also refused ‘to swear
military oaths and to bear arms even in the barracks, let alone in times of war’.54
Moreover, Repenter preaching caused Orthodox believers to doubt their faith
and turn to atheism.55 Repenters, he said, claimed that primitive Christianity
had been corrupted by Judaism and Paganism, meaning that Baptists who
went back to Scripture had more in common with the early Church than did
the Orthodox, who claimed apostolic continuity.56 In some places Baptists
apparently taught communism to children while at the same time refusing to
baptize them regardless of the implications their unbaptized state had on their
eternal destinies.57
Comşa and his colleagues argued that the ROC was under attack from
foreigners just as the Russian Church was suffering under ‘Judeo-Bolshevik’ anticlericalism. Social democracy, according to Comşa, was ‘the greatest enemy of
the Church’, and it was no accident that Repenter communities were essentially
democratic.58 Emphasizing the Jewish and Hungarian origins of some Baptist
preachers, he claimed that Repenters represented a foreign attempt to undermine
the creation of Greater Romania.59 Comşa said that individuals who became
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
Comşa, Cheia sectelor religioase, 13.
Comşa, Zece ani de luptă, 10.
Comşa, Zece ani de luptă, 16.
Savin, Iconoclaşti şi apostăţi, 51.
Comşa, Cheia sectelor religioase, 5–7.
Comşa, Fiinţa şi necesitatea, 18.
Comşa, Combaterea catehismului, 38.
Comşa, Fiinţa şi necesitatea, 18–20; Comşa, Combaterea catehismului, 23.
Comşa, Istoria predicei, 3.
Comşa, Zece ani de luptă, 6–8, 20–22.
134
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Baptists even stopped wearing Romanian peasant garb and began dressing like
Germans.60 As one missionary wrote to his colleagues in 1929, ‘the whole world
knows that Baptist proselytism happens with foreign money’.61 Comşa agreed,
pointing out that Romanian-language publications were often financed by
American donors.62 In 1930 he told a remarkable story about a meeting he had
apparently had on a train heading towards Oradea nineteen years earlier:
Sitting in my compartment, I heard songs that I had never heard before. In
the next carriage there were scores of women and men singing Baptist hymns.
Curiosity drove me to them and suddenly a baptised Yid, their preacher Mayer
Carol, comes up to me and asks me who I am. Learning that I was a graduate
of the Theological Institute in Sibiu, he took me into the corridor and said: ‘You
could make a lot of money if you become a Baptist. Look, I left my parents to sell
needles and buttons and shoelaces in Budapest, I became a Baptist and even at
my baptism I immediately received 2,000 crowns.’63
In case the reader had failed to notice that these were ‘women and men’, not
‘men and women’, that the train was heading to an area with a strong Hungarian
presence and that the preacher was a ‘baptised Yid’ who came from Budapest,
Comşa then pointed out on the next page that the Baptists were on their way
to a baptism that was to take place ‘in a Hungarian Baptist meeting hall in
Oradea-Mare’.
Not all Repenter money came from abroad. As Gheorghe Livovschi pointed
out, the Jews who were apparently behind Seventh-Day Adventism did not like
spending their own money to achieve their goals so they collected money from
Adventist converts to spread the religion.64 Money was a frequent problem raised
in these polemics. Comşa complained that Repenters accused Orthodox bishops
of receiving money for sanctifying churches. This was untrue, Comşa insisted.
In reality, he said, bishops gave money away to the poor. Repenters apparently
lied about themselves, too. They claimed that they did not drink alcohol, but
Comşa insisted that they would have if they could afford it.65
Comşa saw the fact that many early Pentecostals originally came from
Baptist churches as evidence that Repenters were not deeply committed to their
60
61
62
63
64
65
Comşa, Combaterea catehismului, 5.
Nicolae A. Murea, ‘Pentru congresul general al misionarilor ortodocşi români din ţară’, Misionarul,
6 October 1929, 64.
Comşa, Combaterea catehismului, 7; Comşa, Pentru neam şi lege, 14.
Comşa, Zece ani de luptă, 1.
Gh. Livovschi, ‘Iudaism şi adventism. Rolul iudaismului în mişcarea sectei cunoscute sub numele de
Adventism’,’ Misionarul, 6 October 1929, 81.
Comşa, Zece ani de luptă, 18–19.
Missionaries
135
denominations, repeatedly telling stories about preachers who moved from
one denomination to another.66 Their schismatic tendencies as well as their
ecclesiology convinced Comşa that Repenters did not believe that the Church
was one body and that Repenter congregations were not actually part of the
Church.67 Comşa also quarrelled directly with Repenter beliefs. His polemical
tone consistently patronized Repenters, who he considered simple and
uneducated, in need of his extensive education. He accused them of playing
God by expelling sinners from their churches when only God has the right
to separate the wheat from the weeds (see Matthew 13:30). But ultimately for
Comşa this doctrine was just another example of Repenter hypocrisy because,
he wrote, ‘they proclaim loudly: there are only pure members in our assemblies
because we have shown sinners the door’, but in fact he knew of one sinner who
Repenters claimed they had expelled when in reality ‘not even a hair on his
head moved’.68
Adventists apparently cared so little for the Bible that they changed the text to
suit their own doctrines and Comşa showed that Baptists did not really believe
in sola scriptura (the authority of Scripture alone) because their own catechism
admitted that the Gospel was passed down through word of mouth as well as
in written form and they taught the ‘entirely unscriptural’ doctrine that only
‘ordained pastors’ could baptize people.69 Similarly, Baptists taught that baptism
takes place after one believes, whereas St Paul said that ‘you were washed,
you were sanctified, you were justified’ (1 Cor. 6:11), putting baptism before
sanctification and justification.70 Moreover, said Comşa, if salvation is a miracle,
why does God have to wait until one turns fifteen, which was when Baptists
baptized young people?71
Baptists refused to recognize Orthodox sacraments such as the Eucharist. Not
realizing that God forgives sin here and now, they claimed that He forgave sins at
the time of the resurrection and just ‘remembered’ their salvation when taking
the Lord’s Supper.72 Comşa condemned Baptists both for their divergences
with Romanian Orthodoxy and for their similarities. He complained that
Baptists had ‘stolen’ their beliefs from the Orthodox Church because they, too,
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
Ibid., 12.
Comşa, Combaterea catehismului, 19–22.
Grigorie Comşa, Pedepsirea păcătoşilor şi scoaterea din adunările Baptiste (Arad: Tiparul Tipografiei
Diecezane, 1929), 4.
Comşa, Pentru neam şi lege, 13; Comşa, Combaterea catehismului, 8–10, 27.
Comşa, Combaterea catehismului, 33.
Ibid., 41.
Ibid., 51–8.
136
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
used the Apostles’ Creed.73 At the same time, Baptists believed that they could
understand God’s word by themselves, without help from nineteen centuries of
wise Christian teachers – a claim that Comşa thought ludicrous because Baptists
themselves admitted that the human mind is incapable of understanding all of
God’s mysteries.74
Comşa was concerned with what he perceived as widespread irreligion in
the villages, which produced ignorance about Orthodoxy and subsequently
made people vulnerable to Repenter proselytism. ‘In church life’, he wrote in
1920, ‘we see indifference about indifference. We are painfully aware that there
are even priests who have taken up commerce. People don’t really go to church
any more; the laws and commandments of the church are ignored. Adultery is
spreading, the name of God is mocked, the holy mysteries are trodden underfoot
and sectarianism runs rampant’.75 In the cities, Comşa said, ‘we have printed
pornography, frivolous literature; in schools there are people teaching evolution
and Darwinism, monism continues, free thinking exists, [and] Masonic
humanitarianism and atheism are winning all the prizes’.76 He argued that ‘we
are called to show that our people is not only religious in terms of patriarchal
village traditions, but also through education and religious instruction’.77 Others
were not so pessimistic and saw in sectarianism evidence that people really did
long for greater religious involvement. The missionary priest Mihail Madan
wrote in 1929 that
Even while atheist and non-Christian propaganda spreads we find that many
people long for religious truth. The very spread of the sects is evidence of a
religious movement among the people. We should not see the sick growth of the
sects as a sign of spiritual death. If the social organism was dead then diseases
would not show up on the body. The fact that there are diseases shows that the
organism is alive.78
Greek Catholic writers echoed the same ideas that could be found in Comşa’s
works. Nicolae Brânzeu described the spread of Adventism as ‘one of the sad
results of the war’.79 He equated Adventists with Bible Students and warned that
‘in five to ten years villages and entire regions will end up with empty churches,
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
Ibid., 11–13.
Ibid., 14–17.
Comşa, Istoria predicei, 3.
Comşa, Glasul pietrelor, 15.
Comşa, Fiinţa şi necesitatea, 1.
Mihail Madan, ‘O nouă eră pentru activitatea misionară’, Misionarul, 6 October 1929, 60.
Nicolae Brânzeu, Adventismul şi combaterea aceluia’, Cultura creştină 11, no. 7–8 (1922): 223.
Missionaries
137
and even worse, this religious revolution implies a complete social revolution!’80
Like the Orthodox, Greek Catholics argued that evangelism was the only
solution to the spread of Repenter Christianity. ‘Catechize, brothers!’ wrote
Iuliu of Gherla in 1927. ‘Preach every Sunday and holiday. Catechize the adults
in church, catechize children in school. Proclaim the Gospel in all its power.
Establish the Kingdom of God in people’s souls … There is no other way for the
people to be reborn’.81
Despite the best efforts of missionaries, the number of Repenter groups
continued to grow. Their apparent failure led to constant debates about the best
ways to combat the threat. Iosif Trifa argued in 1926 that ‘there is no other way
to combat sectarianism than a great movement of evangelism’.82 Comşa taught
that successful missionaries needed to be well organized, popular with the local
priests, persistent in prayer and mindful of the needs of parishioners.83 With
the aim of creating what he called ‘a militant church’, he suggested modelling
Orthodox missions on the youth wing of Catholic Action that developed
in Mussolini’s Italy in the late 1920s as a way of strengthening lay activism.84
Others insisted that philanthropy was the key to winning hearts and souls
and encouraged their colleagues to make this a core part of their ministries.85
Still others worried that ‘not every representative of the clergy is prepared [to
combat sectarianism] and furthermore, we lack the material needed to carry
on the fight’.86 By this the author meant that Romanians still lacked a reliable
translation of the Bible, commentaries, theological works and published antisectarian polemics.
Not all Orthodox leaders agreed with using force against Repenters.
Vartolomeu Stănescu in particular was outspoken against the use of violence to
persecute religious minorities.
Our Romanian state, so new and with such a young social life, so buffeted inside
and out by disturbances for such as time, is obligated more than any other state,
to prepare a peaceful future for itself in religious matters, now and in the most
urgent manner. Its first duty is to stand by its church, which has been privileged
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
Nicolae Brânzeu, Adventismul şi combaterea lui’, Cultura creştină 11, no. 11–12 (1922): 308.
‘Calea renaşterii’, Unirea 37, no. 4 (1927): 1.
Ioan Trifa, ‘Viaţa Bisericeasă: Probleme actuale’, Revistă teologică 16, no. 1 (1926): 24.
Grigorie Comşa, ‘Secretul misionarismului,’ Misionarul, 6 October 1929, 7–10.
Comşa, Glasul pietrelor, 18–22, 31ff.
I. Puiul, ‘Activitatea filantropică’, Misionarul, 6 October 1929, 29–31.
Al. Bogdaneţ, ‘Un început bun’, Misionarul, 6 October 1929, 90.
138
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
up until now in both confessional and constitutional terms, but to renounce
oppression decidedly and in its entirety.87
The problem, Stănescu believed, was that Orthodox Church services did not
engage laypeople enough. ‘In our churches’, he wrote, ‘Orthodox Christians are
just an audience, stuck on their feet for hours on end during a service which
they often don’t even understand the words of ’.88 His solution to the problem of
Repenters was to encourage both priests and laypeople to read and discuss the
Bible, to establish Orthodox choirs and cultural associations and for the Church
to increase its charity work to the poor.89
After an unsuccessful year of missionary work Ilie Imbrescu concluded
that arguing with Repenters was futile and that the Orthodox Church would
combat sectarianism much more effectively by having wise and sensitive priests,
church printing presses, bookstores, candle factories and by giving to the poor.90
Representatives at the 1928 Congress agreed with him, suggesting innovations
such as establishing Sunday schools, choirs and cultural committees in every
parish, making monasteries into religious tourist attractions for young people,
distributing popular Bibles and icons, selling religious tracts, founding ‘moral
committees’ in parishes to combat sin and setting up cinemas.91 In many ways
these strategies were a deepening and continuation of ordinary, everyday
Orthodox ministry. The state eventually withdrew funding from the missionary
programme in 1931, but the strategies and hatreds promoted by Comşa lived
on in organizations such as the Lord’s Army and in the missionary committees,
youth groups, catechism courses and university courses missionaries had
established over the last decade.92
What missionary writings rarely mentioned was the role of the police and
gendarmerie in preventing the spread of Repenters. Repenters were frequently
beaten, arrested, tortured and even killed by the authorities, often at the
instigation of missionaries or parish priests. Anti-Repenter activities involved
close cooperation between the Church and the state, which saw Repenters as a
common threat. Both Church and state embraced the Orthodoxist doctrine that
to be Romanian was to be Orthodox, and persecuted Repenters accordingly.
87
88
89
90
91
92
Quoted in Raiu, Democraţie şi statolatrie, 303–4.
Vartolomeu Stănescu, ‘Mijloacele pentru preîntâmpinarea ereziilor’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 40,
no. 2 (1921): 129–32, reprinted in Stănescu, Puterile sociale, 332.
Ibid., 336–7.
Imbrescu, Misionarul eparhial, 17–20.
‘Dezideratele Congresului general misionar din Arad, sesiunea 1928’, Misionarul, 6 October 1929,
104–5.
Comşa, Glasul pietrelor, 9–11.
Missionaries
139
The changing and uncertain legal status of Repenter denominations further
exacerbated the situation, giving local gendarmes the perfect excuse to persecute
Repenter communities even when they were legally allowed to operate.
A common anti-Repenter rhetoric also helped overcome regional tensions
within the Church to a certain extent, bringing Orthodox leaders in Arad,
Oltenia and Bessarabia into close cooperation and creating a platform that
no Orthodox leader could challenge. Visarion Puiu tried to expand on this
success by writing to Orthodox leaders across the region and suggesting that
the difficult situation the Church now found itself in meant that it was time for
all of the Orthodox churches to unite across national borders. His initiative was
welcomed but had no lasting impact.93 Although evangelism, lay involvement
and holiness movements lay at the heart of the anti-Repenter agenda, fears about
Repenters simultaneously cast doubts over the orthodoxy of such practices. Part
Three is concerned precisely with that tension between promoting individual
piety as a solution to the scourge of Repenters and the concern that all such
practices were quintessentially Protestant.
93
Const N. Tomescu, ‘Spre unire in Domnul’, Misionarul 2, no. 19 (1930): 887–909.
140
8
The Lord’s Army
The most successful attempt to revive rural spirituality was known as the Lord’s
Army (Oastea Domnului). It was led by Iosif Trifa from the Transylvanian city of
Sibiu and based around the newspaper Lumina satelor (The Light of the Villages).
Nicolae Bălan edited a newspaper called Gazeta poporului (The People’s Gazette)
between 1918 and 1920, and in 1922 he invited Trifa to establish a new Church
newspaper aimed at a peasant audience. Trifa considered his new newspaper
to be a direct successor of Gazeta poporului and sent sample copies of Lumina
satelor to everyone who had subscribed to Bălan’s newspaper.1 Trifa had studied
under Bălan as a student, standing out because of his newspaper articles on the
difficulties faced by Romanian peasants in Transylvania.2 Trifa later claimed
that Bălan had taught him the necessity of ‘sharing with the people the supreme
reality of the spiritual life; of bringing it into contact with Christ, with life in
Christ’, which is indeed something that Bălan had been teaching based on his
published sermons.3
Trifa served as a village priest in Vidra de Sus in Alba county from 1911 until
1921, where he established a village cooperative, founded a cultural centre and
wrote regular articles in the local newspaper defending the rights of the local
peasants.4 He published a successful collection of sermons in 1919, and one
of his former teachers, Ion Lupaş, invited him to move to Cluj to pursue an
academic career. Trifa rejected the offer because ‘to me the word “priest” is a
grace, a gift, and a great responsibility, not a burden that can easily be set aside’.5
That same year Bălan offered him an administrative post in Sibiu where he
1
2
3
4
5
Iosif Trifa, ‘1000’, Lumina satelor, 19 February 1922, 1.
Gheorghe Gogan, ‘Viaţa şi activitatea predicatorială a preotului Iosif Trifa’ (MA diss., Universitatea
‘Aurel Vlaicu’, Arad, 2003), 11–12.
Oastea Domnului 10, no. 24 (1931): 1; cf. Nicolae Bălan, Problema religiósă în timpul de azi (Sibiu:
Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane, 1906), 52.
Gogan, ‘Viaţa şi activitatea’, 13.
Biserica şi şcoala, 26 September 1920.
144
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
served as a chaplain at the theological academy, director of a church orphanage
and published Lumina satelor.66 Transylvania already had a successful rural
newspaper known as Libertatea (Liberty), but Lumina satelor was to have a
more explicitly religious focus and was under Bălan’s direct authority.7 In an
enthusiastic article praising the new newspaper, the priest Ioan Crăciun noted
that what set Lumina satelor apart from its competitors was that it was written
specifically with ‘the enlightenment of the people’ in mind and did not serve the
interests of particular individuals or political parties.8
Sibiu was the seat of the metropolitan of Ardeal and boasted one of the
country’s best seminaries. Fifty-two per cent of the 194,600 people who lived
in Sibiu county at the time of the 1930 census were Orthodox, 28 per cent were
Lutherans and 13 per cent Greek Catholics. There were only 47 Seventh-Day
Adventists and 408 Baptists.9 Only 48,000 people lived in Sibiu itself, the rest
being scattered throughout the county’s 89 villages, but there was no marked
migration from the countryside to the city.10 The city boasted good road and rail
connections, good hospitals, a central library with over 66,400 books, 19 primary
schools and 22 secondary schools; the only post-secondary institution being
the Andreiană Theological Academy for training Orthodox priests. Someone
looking for a religious service could find an Orthodox cathedral, three
Orthodox churches, one Greek Catholic church, two Lutheran churches, two
Roman Catholic churches, one Reformed church and two synagogues. All three
of Sibiu’s monasteries were Roman Catholic. A city with a strong civil society, it
had 37 newspapers and magazines, of which seven were religious publications
and 21 were printed in Romanian. The county had a relatively high literacy rate
in 1930, with 87.9 per cent of men and 82.6 per cent of women over the age of
seven able to read.11
Nicolae Bălan had completed his doctoral studies in theology at the
University of Czernowitz and studied Protestant and Catholic theology in
Breslău. He established Revista teologică (The Theological Magazine) soon after
returning to Romania in an effort to deepen and professionalize Romanian
Gogan, ‘Viaţa şi activitatea’, 15.
Ioan Moţa, 42 de ani de gazetărie (Orăştie: Tipografia Astra, 1935); Nicolae Bălan, ‘Binecuvântare
arhierească’, Lumina satelor, 2 January 1922, 1.
8
Ioan Crăciun, ‘Lumina satelor’, Telegraful român, 26 April 1922, 3.
9
Manuila, Recensământul din 1930, vol. 2, lxxxiv–lxxxv.
10
Ministerul Industriei şi Comerţului, Anuarul statistic al României: 1922 (Bucharest: Tipografia
Curţii Regale, 1923), 23.
11
Dimitrie Gusti ed., Enciclopedia României, vol. 2 (Bucharest: Imprimeria Națională, 1938). Available
online: http://romaniainterbelica.memoria.ro/judete/sibiu/ (accessed 9 October 2019).
6
7
The Lord’s Army
145
theological research. Believing that the early twentieth century was witnessing
a widespread turn towards religion and a fresh engagement with Christianity,
Bălan strove to increase theological literacy among Romanians by promoting
Bible study and supporting the distribution of popularized Bibles designed for
newly literate peasants.12 Bălan worked to establish his metropolitanate as one
of the most important in the country and called a ‘Bible Congress’ to discuss
new possibilities for evangelism in the region.13 The impetus for establishing
Lumina satelor came from Bălan, who initially supported Trifa’s efforts to
establish the Lord’s Army, only to attempt to co-opt it for his own purposes at
the end of the decade.
Trifa’s early articles in Lumina satelor were concerned with building the
Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Transylvania into a strong and viable
Church. He celebrated the fact that Ardeal now had its own metropolitanate and
complained bitterly that the state was taking control of church schools.14 Like
Bălan, Trifa considered Greek Catholics to be a threat and had no patience when
they complained about being unjustly treated by the state.15 Bălan took part in
ecumenical talks with the Anglican Church in 1923. Trifa praised this initiative,
writing that ‘if this relationship is made, our Orthodox Church will gain a great
deal because the Anglican Church is ahead of everyone else, with its church
schools and its methods of spreading the gospel of Christ. Everyone would
rejoice at it; only the Pope in Rome would mourn’.16 Trifa also agreed with Bălan
that the 1927 concordat with the Vatican was the gift of a ‘Catholic’ government
to Rome.17 Trifa maintained a consistently anti-Catholic attitude throughout his
career, provoking bitter responses from the Greek Catholic press.18
Excited about the country’s expansion after the First World War, Trifa
worried that if Greater Romania was to last it needed a moral as well as a political
transformation. In a collection of sermons he published in 1919 he argued that
‘the people which wins the war will be the one which, aided by more faith and
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Bălan, Problema religiósă, 4–5; Nicolae Bălan, Un congres românesc biblic (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei
Arhidiecezane, 1912); Nicolae Bălan, În chestia ‘micii Biblii’ (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane,
1914).
Gogan, Viaţa şi activitatea, 15.
Iosif Trifa, ‘Moştenirea anului 1921’, Lumina satelor, 9 January 1922, 2; Iosif Trifa, ‘Şi cu cei fărădelege
împreună s’au socotit’, Lumina satelor, 29 January 1922, 1–2.
Iosif Trifa, ‘Cum merge împărţirea pământului’, Lumina satelor, 28 May 1922, 3.
Iosif Trifa, ‘Englezii vreau să-şi împreune biserica cu a noastră’, Lumina satelor, 18 February 1923, 4.
‘Un dar de 6 luni de guvernare: Concordatul’, Lumina satelor, 26 May 1929, 5.
‘Papa dela Roma s’a întovărăşit cu bolşevicii’, Lumina satelor, 21 December 1924, 8; ‘Un praznic al
trufei face Papa dela Roma’, Lumina satelor, 11 January 1925, 2. For the Greek Catholic response, see
‘Ştirile săptămânii’, Unirea poporului, 5 July 1925, 4; ‘Poşta gazetei’, Unirea poporului, 12 May 1929, 7.
146
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
purer habits, will be able to halt the decay of morals and traditions that has
dangerously begun’.19 During a brief war scare in January 1923 Trifa complained
that, instead of uniting Romanians behind ‘spiritual borders’, his government was
squabbling amongst itself about which ‘political borders’ would most effectively
prevent a Hungarian invasion.20 He worried that the League of Nations would be
ineffective at preventing war because it invited bankers and industrialists to its
meetings but not Church leaders, ‘the spiritual leaders of the peoples’.21
Comparing Romanians to the ancient Israelites, who were delivered from
Egypt only to spend forty years in the wilderness, Trifa wrote,
We have escaped from slavery, but behold we have not reached Canaan, the land
of milk and honey … We too have arrived in the wilderness of misfortune and
lack. God wants it to be like this, because after we escaped from foreign slavery
we too destroyed our habits and behaviour … We even have a golden calf. An
insane greed has seized many people, who only think about making money,
often through the subjection, tears and privation of the poor. What else can
this be but an idol that many bow down to, even those whose duty and calling
it is to smash it? Then we have gambling and merrymaking surrounding the
calf: everywhere you hear waves of parties, pleasures and sins that are spreading
further and further out, poisoning the clean living of our villages of yesteryear.22
He identified the moral decadence of the inter-war years particularly with the
urban centres of the Old Kingdom. Gheorghe Greavu, a cantor from a village
in north-western Transylvania, wrote to Trifa in 1925 that, during a recent visit
to Bucharest, ‘I saw that he who has money spends it on balls, coffee shops, and
many other useless things. Then the poor suffer from lack of bread and clothing,
in cold and nakedness, and from many other problems’.23 Trifa witnessed similar
behaviour in Sibiu and wondered who was sicker – the poor who suffered in
the hospitals he visited or the rich who debauched themselves at parties every
night.24 Trifa warned that, just as in the fable of Master Manole, a stonemason
who cemented his wife into the walls of a church he was building, modern
Romanians were building their state by burying war widows and orphans in
19
20
21
22
23
24
Iosif Trifa, Spre Canaan … 15 predici în legatură cu răsboiul şi vremile noastre (Arad: Tipografia
Diecezană, 1919), 12.
Iosif Trifa, ‘Ne trebuie şi fronturi sufleteşti’, Lumina satelor, 28 January 1923, 1.
‘După sfătul dela Genova’, Lumina satelor, 28 May 1922, 1.
Trifa, Spre Canaan, 26. Trifa developed this metaphor at length in Iosif Trifa, ‘România Mare – unele
pricini de ce nu este aşa cum o credeam şi aşteptam’, Lumina satelor, 1 January 1922, 1–2.
‘Încă unul a intrat în oastea noastră’, Lumina satelor, 25 February 1925, 3.
‘La spital şi la bal’, Lumina satelor, 11 February 1923, 2.
The Lord’s Army
147
its foundations.25 Those who were corrupting the state were blaspheming the
sacrifices of those who had died during the war.26
Trifa’s concern with establishing a viable Romanian nation-state focused first
and foremost on how it would impact peasants. He deplored politicians who
were only concerned with enriching themselves and condemned political infighting as a spiritual illness.27 Trifa kept a close eye on legislation concerning
land redistribution after the war and promised to fight for the rights of any
villages that felt they had been defrauded.28 He also campaigned for halting
imports and for eliminating export taxes so that Romanian farmers could find
markets for their produce.29
Both Trifa and Bălan attacked Repenters and Inochentists, although Lumina
satelor included fewer anti-sectarian articles than most Orthodox publications.
The newspaper argued that many Adventist and Baptist preachers were actually
‘Yids’ (jidani) and accused them of selling secrets to the Bolsheviks.30 Despite
his hostility towards Repenters, Trifa was reading Protestant writings himself
and many of his sermon illustrations and devotional stories were based in
England or America.31 His concern with preaching was a direct result of his
anti-sectarianism. Trifa argued that ‘without a doubt the most powerful and
effective weapon against the sectarians is the preaching, proclamation, and
exposition of the Word … The majority of our children who go astray and cross
over to the sectarians do so because there they read and explain the Scriptures,
even if they do it badly’.32 Trifa worked with Grigore Cristescu to translate
excerpts from the sermons of the Indian preacher Sadhu Sundar Singh into a
language that Romanian peasants could understand.33 Singh was an Anglican
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Iosif Trifa, ‘Văduvele şi orfanii de răsboiu’, Lumina satelor, 5 February 1922, 1. On the story of
Manole, see Mircea Eliade, Zalmoxis, The Vanishing God: Comparative Studies in the Religions and
Folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 164–9; and Paul
G. Brewster, ‘The Foundation Sacrifice Motif in Legend, Folksong, Game, and Dance’, in The WalledUp Wife: A Casebook, ed. Alan Dundes (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1996), 42–6.
Iosif Trifa, ‘Un păcat neiertat’, Lumina satelor, 9 February 1922, 1.
‘Politica de partid este opera lui Satan’, Lumina satelor, 26 June 1927, 1; Iosif Trifa, 25 povestiri şi
istorioare morale (Sibiu: Dacia Traiana, 1927), 15.
‘Reforma agrară’, Lumina satelor, 1 January 1922, 5.
‘De ce nu-s destui bani’, Lumina satelor, 29 January 1922, 4; ‘Se aproprie noua recoltă’, Lumina satelor,
26 June 1927, 1.
T. Povaţa, ‘Despre pocăiţii aşa numiţi adventişti’, Lumina satelor, 23 April 1922, 1–2; Şerban
Brâncoveanu, ‘Sectarismul, sionismul şi bolsevismul’, Lumina satelor, 5 June 1927, 2.
‘Este tata la cârmă?’ Lumina satelor, 23 July 1922, 1; Iosif Trifa, ‘Stai în loc şi-ţi fă socoată!’ Lumina
satelor, 14 January 1923, 1; Iosif Trifa, ‘Un dar sufletesc’, Lumina satelor, 4 March 1923, 1.
Iosif Trifa, ‘Sectarismul religios’, Revista teologică 11, no. 6–7 (1921): 192.
Sadhu Sundar Singh, La picioarele stăpânului meu (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane, 1928).
148
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
but he presented Christianity in terms of Indian culture, making him exotic
enough not to threaten Orthodox sensibilities. Pamphlets such as Singh’s were
particularly successful in inter-war Romania because of the growing literacy
rates in rural areas. Trifa took advantage of the fact that more and more people
could read by distributing Bibles and writing short sermons and exegeses aimed
at peasant audiences.34 Bălan considered the newspaper’s first year to have been
a great success and at the end of 1922 he awarded Trifa with an honorary red
silk belt.35
Trifa published attacks on drunkenness from the beginning and the Lord’s
Army became a temperance movement in 1923.36 Trifa writes that, while he
was thinking about his past year’s work late one night at the end of 1922, ‘a
crowd of drunks passed by my window shouting loudly. This increased my
pain. I fell to my knees in tears and wept, begging God to give me success in
my labours’.37 God inspired him to ask his readers to take an oath, Trifa said,
abstaining from alcohol and from swearing. New Year celebrations in Romania
were not very Christian, Trifa wrote in the first issue of 1923. ‘At any price,
whatever the cost, we hold on to our ignorant, pagan tradition: for the new year
to find us drunk and to get drunk again in the new year’. He wrote that Satan
wants us ‘to enter the new year with the same sins that we left the last one with,
so that we might enter the next year, and eventually the grave, with these same
sins’.38 In the next few issues Trifa began to refer to those who took the oath
to give up drinking as ‘soldiers’ (ostaşi) and the idea soon developed that they
constituted ‘the Lord’s Army’.
Temperance was not a new idea in Romania. In Transylvania, where
Trifa worked, temperance movements had emerged in the second half of the
nineteenth century. In 1912 Vasile Oana encouraged his readers to admit that
Our people are alcoholic, and that alcohol addiction, with all its sad outcomes,
has developed strong and deep roots. And from sin, sin is born; while the
fair and certain price is moral death … In our case, as well as in the case of
34
35
36
37
38
Iosif Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului? 5th edn (Sibiu: Editura Oastea Domnului, 1934), 92ff; Iosif
Trifa, Cetiri şi tâlcuiri din Biblie (Sibiu: Editura Archdiecezană, 1924).
‘Informaţiuni’, Biserica şi şcoala, 15/28 January 1923, 7.
‘Ştirile săptămânii’, Lumina satelor, 9 January 1922, 4; Leo Tolstoi, ‘Cine a iscodit rachiul?’ Lumina
satelor, 5 February 1922, 2–3; Neculce, ‘O ciudată pedeapsă americană’, Lumina satelor, 25 June 1922, 3.
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 231.
Iosif Trifa, ‘Să facem o intrare creştinească în anul cel nou cu hotărâre şi întovărăşire de luptă
împotrivă sudalmelor şi beţiilor’, Lumina satelor, 14 January 1923, 1.
The Lord’s Army
149
other nations, alcohol addiction has surpassed all the differences in social
position, age, or gender; as our intellectual class and the common people, the
elder and the young, men and women, all together drink alcohol in an abusive
manner.39
A doctor from Braşov had established a Society for the Enemies of Alcohol
and Nicotine only a month before Trifa launched the Lord’s Army.40 Temperance
was so popular, in fact, that Miron Cristea introduced a ‘Temperance Day’ in
1930, involving a festival in the middle of Bucharest with ‘educational and antialcoholic’ activities.41 Orthodox preachers quite often attacked drunkenness
and swearing along with smoking and disrespecting Sundays. Gurie Grosu, for
example, echoed Trifa’s comments about how Romanians celebrated Sundays
and holidays:
Instead of staying home with their families and going to the church service in
the village, they leave for the market with rent, produce, vegetables, fruits and
cereals. And here, as the pubs are open, they turn to drunkenness. Returning
home late at night they look for reasons to argue with those who stayed home,
starting quarrels and vomiting filthy words out of hearts full of drink.42
Another priest, Gheorghe Chiriţescu, blamed the fact that evening dances
took place next to taverns and said that young people started drinking once
the dancing was over, led astray by their drunken elders. He complained that
alcoholics spread stories that drink was actually healthy and wrote, ‘I have seen
women, young and old, carrying eggs – food for their little children – in their
aprons and receiving brandy in return. They hide it at home somewhere, in a
barrel of beans or bran and drink it when things get too bad. Even sadder, I
have even seen mothers give this poison to babies who are still breastfeeding!’
Chiriţescu warned that ‘the spirit of brandy destroys the fragile connection
between the brain and the spinal cord, which is why almost all drunks are broken
39
40
41
42
Vasile Oana, ‘Prefaţă’, in Augustin Egger, Clerul şi chestiunea alcoholismului (1912), quoted in
Marius Rotar, ‘Alcoholism in Transylvania in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and Early
Twentieth Century’, The International Journal of Regional and Local Studies 3, no. 2 (2007): 44.
‘Societatea duşmanii alcohoolui şi nicotinei’, Gazeta Transilvaniei, 1 December 1922, in ANIC –
Braşov, Fond Personal Gyurgyevich, Dosar 3, f. 5.
ANIC – Craiova, Fond Parohia Bisericii Obedeanu Craiova, Dosar 57/1930, f. 26.
Grosu Gurie, I – Cinstirea Duminicei şi a serbatorilor, II – Păcatul sudalmilor şi vorbilor urâte
(Chişinău: Tipografia Eparhială, 1923), 3. See also Grosu Gurie, I. Păcatul dela umblarea la
iarmaroace în zilele de Dumineci. II. Păcatul fumatului de tutun (Chişinău: Tipografia Eparhială,
1924).
150
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
of mind and body’.43 Alcohol was, the teacher Iuliu Grofşorean argued, one of the
devil’s greatest weapons, taking both people’s health and their money.44
The tavern was frequently placed in competition with the church and
preachers assumed that alcohol was the main reason for a lack of religiosity. In
one sermon a priest told of a legend:
The devil saw that people had begun to build houses of prayer, with high towers
pointing to the heavens and that they called them churches, which means the
house of God because in church everyone comes together to offer up prayers of
thanksgiving to God and to bring sacrifices for all the good things that he gives
to us. The devil wracked his brains to find a way to have a church for himself and
to get slaves and faithful servants on earth.
With this in mind he asked God to let him build himself a house of prayer to
meet his needs. It would not be called a church, but a tavern. God knew that he had
given holy and godly commandments to men so that they knew what to embrace
and what to avoid. ‘You have before you fire and water, good and evil’, says Holy
Scripture, ‘choose’.45 Neither drinkers nor drunks will inherit the Kingdom of God,
as if one were to say ‘don’t go to the tavern for danger lurks there’.
Knowing that men had enough commandments that would stop them going
to the church of the devil, or the tavern, God allowed the devil to build a tavern.
For men also have enough brains, unlike the dumb animals, to know to avoid
the tavern like a ‘murderous cross’ …
The devil put a Jew [in the tavern] in place of a priest, brought from Galicia
for this purpose, or from somewhere else but never from the village, knowing
that people love foreign publicans more than their own people. They called their
first priest ‘Master’ (jupâne) just as one would call a priest ‘Father’, and he was
from Galicia, with sidelocks (payot) and a big beard and a kippa on his head.
They called him ‘Master Frankenstein’. Sharp as pepper and crafty as a fox.46
As did other Orthodox preachers, Trifa frequently associated Jews with taverns
to show that alcoholism was a foreign evil and was in no way connected to
Christianity. Jews ran the taverns in all of Trifa’s stories and he insisted that most
Repenter preachers were actually ‘Yids’ in disguise.47 ‘Most publicans are Yids’,
43
44
45
46
47
Gheorghe Chiriţescu, Otrava vieţii (Târgu Neamţ: Tipgrafiei Monastirii Neamţu, 1924), 11, 16.
Iuliu Grofşorean, Scrieri pentru popor (Arad: Tiparul Diecezane Gr-Or. Rom., 1906), 3–6.
The allusion is to Deuteronomy 30:19, but this is actually a quote from Caesarius of Arles, The Fathers
of the Church: St. Caesarius of Arles, Sermons, vol. 2. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1963), 329.
B. Podoabă, ‘Povestea cârciumei: Conferinţă ţinută la adunarea despărţământul Astrei la Dezmir, de
B. Podoabă’, in ANIC, Fond Miron Cristea, Dosar 1902/1, f. 63.
Ibid., Povaţa, ‘Despre pocăiţii aşa numiţi adventişti’; ‘Visul beţivului’, Lumina satelor, 28 January
1923, 5.
The Lord’s Army
151
he wrote, ‘and the taverns are full of fake drinks which make people very ill.
They have caught Yids in Maramureş, in Braşov [and] Orade[a] who make up
the brandy with lime, sulfuric acid and ash’.48 The heroes of many of the short
stories Trifa printed in Lumina satelor were poor but righteous peasants who,
when confronted with learned or wealthy atheists from the towns, rejected their
disbelief and challenged them to change their ways – usually with amazing
success.49 The villains were often Jews. Thinking back to when Transylvania
was part of Hungary, Trifa wrote that ‘[Buda]Pest was a real Babylon, destroyed
thanks to the Judaism that ruled in those days that we despised’, and complained
that now Jews had corrupted Bucharest as well.50 Although the newspaper was
otherwise apolitical, during the 1920s Trifa praised the antisemitic student
movement and A. C. Cuza’s National Christian Defense League.51
Despite the number of Orthodox sermons condemning drinking and
smoking, Repenters were the only religious group to consistently practice
temperance. Confronted by Repenters who considered Orthodox believers to
be ‘a herd of drunkards and debauchers’, Trifa offered temperance as a first step
in morally reforming the Church.52 A farm worker (plugar) identified as N. T.
wrote to Trifa:
I wanted to repent because I have long liked the good habits of the Repenters
who don’t swear and don’t drink and I worried about what I should do. Often I
would wake up in the night and think about repenting but when I went to sleep
again all sorts of visions and nightmares appeared. I woke up terrified and it
seemed like I had woken my ancestors from the grave, who shook my house
in anger that I would want to abandon their ways. But now I thank God that
Lumina satelor has freed me from my evil thoughts and has brought home to
me a decision to renounce swearing and drunkenness with hate and disgust.53
As the name suggests, Trifa saw the Lord’s Army as ‘a declaration of spiritual
warfare against the tricks of the devil, against darkness and evil’.54 He explicitly
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 106. In fact, only 2.1 per cent of publicans were Jewish. Andrei
Oişteanu, Inventing the Jew: Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romanian and Other Central-East European
Cultures, trans. Mirela Adăscălţei (Lincoln: University of Nebaska Press, 2009), 176.
Iosif Trifa, ‘Să începem dela început’, Lumina satelor, 1 January 1922, 3; Traian Scorobeţ, ‘Ţara
fericită’, Lumina satelor, 1 January 1922, 2–5; ‘Ţăranul şi necredinciosul’, Lumina satelor, 9 July 1922,
3; ‘Cum a păcălit un om pe dracul’, Lumina satelor, 17 May 1925, 5; Trifa, 25 povestiri.
‘Jos Sodoma şi Gomora’, Lumina satelor, 25 June 1922, 2.
‘Mişcarea împotriva jidanilor’, Lumina satelor, 11 February 1923, 2; ‘Ce mai e nou în viaţa politică?’
Lumina satelor, 8 May 1927, 2. On the newspaper’s official political position, see ‘Credinţa noastră
politică’, Lumina satelor, 1 January 1922, 2.
T. Povaţa, ‘Despre pocăiţi’, Lumina satelor, 18 June 1922, 1.
N. T., ‘Şi eu am vrut să mă pocăesc’, Lumina satelor, 28 January 1923, 5.
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 6.
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Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
drew the comparison with the heroism of wartime, saying that ‘faith weakened
after the Great War, Christian love went cold and evil-doing increased terribly’.55
The Lord’s Army grew rapidly. It claimed 10,000 members by April 1927 and
20,000 by 1928.56 Lumina satelor reported that the movement had 60,000
members in 1932, and in 1934 Trifa said that ‘over 100,000 soldiers are now
gathered beneath the flag of the Saviour’.57 Villages sometimes had substantial
communities of over fifty members. Supporters donated their money and time
to distribute pamphlets and Bibles to communities where the movement had
not yet penetrated.58 Trifa never asked for membership fees or compulsory
contributions – members used their money to buy pamphlets that they distributed
for free.59 Others gave large, unsolicited donations which Trifa then publicized
on the front page of the newspaper.60 Accusations that he was extorting money
from people nonetheless dogged the movement from its beginnings.61
Lumina satelor created what Candy Gunther Brown calls a ‘textual community’.
Brown writes that Evangelical Christians in nineteenth-century America used
newspapers and books to form a national – even international – community
based on shared values, common relationships and collective goals rather than
focused on local congregations. Letters to the editor, book reviews and news
about large events reminded Evangelicals that there were people in other parts
of the country who were just like them and allowed them to participate in a
community of people they would never meet face to face.62 D. Voniga, a priest
who had also worked in the temperance movement, wrote in 1925 that ‘today
the press, as a medium for spiritual mediation and cultural propaganda, as a
defensive weapon in the battle for the national interests, as creator of spiritual
unity, of an intellectual community and public opinion, is considered the most
powerful factor of all for battle and for public activity, for all sorts of initiatives,
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
Ibid., 5.
‘“Lumina Satelor” a strâns 10 mii de abonaţi’, Lumina satelor, 24 April 1927, 1; Gogan, ‘Viaţa şi
activitatea’, 19.
Gh. Şoima, ‘Cele două feluri de adunări’, Lumina satelor, 26 June 1932, 1; Trifa, Ce este Oastea
Domnului?, 224.
‘“Lumina satelor” în ajutorul Asociaţiunii’, Lumina satelor, 4 February 1923, 2; Iosif Trifa, ‘Un dar
sufletesc’, Lumina satelor, 4 March 1923, 1; ‘Gazeta “Beiuşul” din Beiuş’, Lumina satelor, 25 March
1925, 2; ‘Din fronturile Oastea Domnului’, Lumina satelor, 7 June 1929, 2.
Iosif Trifa, Munca şi lenea văzute în lumina evangheliei (n.p.: n.p., n.d.), 42.
‘Un dar de 1000 lei pentru societatea ostaşilor lui Isus Hristos’, Lumina satelor, 8 February 1925, 1;
‘O altă înştiinţare cu 1000 lei pentru societatea celor din Oastea Domnului’, Lumina satelor, 1 March
1925, 1.
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 154.
Candy Gunther Brown, The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in
America, 1789–1880 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 9–15.
The Lord’s Army
153
progress and victories’.63 As Voniga was aware, Christians were not the only
people using the press to win Romanian souls, and newspapers were also a
key vehicle for creating grassroots political movements, especially on the far
right.64 The model worked particularly well for Trifa. Peasants signed an oath
and posted it to the newspaper when they joined the Lord’s Army and Lumina
satelor published a regular rubric welcoming new members by name, publishing
their letters and giving news about Lord’s Army gatherings across the country.65
Sometimes entire villages joined the movement at once and in one village so
many people boycotted the tavern that it went bankrupt.66
Thanks to a generous donor from America the newspaper was also able to
offer prizes of money and books to subscribers, drawn once a month, as well
as other prizes for answering questions about the Bible.67 Most of the letters
Trifa published were apparently from people who worked with their hands, but
the list of winners from the first prize draw from 1925 perhaps gives us a more
accurate picture of who his subscribers were. Among the seventy names drawn
were eight priests, three cantors, a parish officer, an administrator, a teacher, a
notary, a shopkeeper, a forester and a farmer.68 Individuals associated with the
church and village intellectuals were thus closely associated with the movement
during its early years, though they were far from being in the majority.
Books and pamphlets were the glue that held the Lord’s Army together. Trifa
loved recounting stories of people being converted through his writings. He
told of one person who joined the movement after finding a copy of Lumina
satelor that someone had left on a train. ‘He took it’, Trifa wrote, ‘read it, liked it,
subscribed to it, and today is full of passion for the Lord and for his soul’. ‘A sweet
story, a Bible, a religious newspaper, a good book, etc., are all gentle calls through
which the Spirit of the Lord seeks to awaken sinners to new life’.69 The ROC
agreed. The official newspaper of the episcopate of Caransebeş, Foaia diecezană
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
D. Voniga, Presa bisericească: Importanţa ei şi mijloace de întreţinere (Timişoara: Tipografia Huniadi,
1925), 5–6.
Roland Clark, Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2015), 122–50; Biliuţă, ‘The Ultranationalist Newsroom’, 186–211.
‘Oastea noastra creşte’, Lumina satelor, 29 December 1924, 3.
‘Hotărârea poporului din satul Botean’, Lumina satelor, 12 April 1925, 1; ‘Ascultaţi ce lucru cuminte
a făcut un sat’, Lumina satelor, 10 May 1925, 1.
‘Pe anul viitor “Lumina satelor” pune premii de mii de lei’, Lumina satelor, 21 December 1924, 8;
‘Prietenul nostru, Ilie Laza, din America’, Lumina satelor, 11 January 1925, 1.
‘Tragerea premiilor gazetei “Lumina satelor”’, Lumina satelor, 8 February 1925, 1; ‘Tragerea premiilor
gazetei “Lumina satelor”’, Lumina satelor, 15 February 1925, 2.
Iosif Trifa, Oglinda inimii omului (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane, 1927), 14.
154
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
(The Diocesian Paper), celebrated the publication of two of Trifa’s collections of
sermons in 1925, telling its readers that
Father I. Trifa pours so much Christian feeling into the hearts of believers
wanting to know and hear the word of God. His holiness has the gift and the
skill of explaining the most profound teachings of Holy Scripture beautifully and
in a way that is easy to understand. In today’s critical times, when the faithful
flock is tossed back and forth by the temptations of life, these two pamphlets are
true spiritual food not only for ordinary people but for all who need spiritual
nourishment and comfort.70
Trifa’s writings were heartily endorsed by a large number of church newspapers
during the 1920s, including by the Greek Catholic press.71
Although they were primarily connected through printed words, members
of the Lord’s Army did meet each other. Nicolae Bălan organized a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem in 1925 and Trifa joined the 160 pilgrims (mostly priests) who
accompanied him, publishing a book-length account of the journey. Trifa wrote
of how the journey brought the pilgrims together as ‘brothers on the road,
brothers in suffering and in the joys that awaited us’. He described reading prayer
books and the writings of the Church Fathers on the train and groups of people
gathered together praying by candlelight.72 More than just a travel account, this
book provided a template for how his soldiers were to behave when they met.
Lumina satelor also published details about propaganda meetings held by the
Lord’s Army. In 1925 a priest named Cornel Magler led thirteen ‘soldiers’ from
his village in a propaganda march to a village in a neighbouring county. The
visit had been arranged with the other priest and ‘the whole village’ turned out
to greet them. A number of people preached about topics such as the second
coming of Christ, the problem of sectarianism and what was expected of people
who joined the Lord’s Army. They led prayers and recited poetry from Lumina
satelor. Forty people joined the movement following this particular excursion.73
A couple of years later Magler became a missionary priest, combining his work
for the Lord’s Army with his official anti-sectarian duties.74 In 1929 members
began organizing regional gatherings at which a hundred or so people would
70
71
72
73
74
‘Două cărţi bune’, Foaia diecezană, 15 February 1925, 4.
‘Cărţi şi reviste’, Unirea, 23 April 1927, 9–10.
Iosif Trifa, Pe urmele Mântuitorului: Însemnări din călătoria la Ierusalim (Sibiu: Tiparul Institutului
de Arte Grafice, 1928), 4–5.
‘Oastea Domnului din Cermeiu în o nouă ofensivă’, Lumina satelor, 25 October 1925, 4.
‘Ofensiva Oastei în Bihor’, Lumina satelor, 26 June 1927, 4.
The Lord’s Army
155
meet to hear sermons and sing songs. The preachers at these occasions were
invariably priests and songs were performed by organized choirs.75
The Lord’s Army established itself in different ways in each place. A police
report from 1949 on the city of Călărași wrote that the Lord’s Army was started
here in 1927 by Ana Ion Scutaru, who received and distributed literature from
Trifa. Trifa himself visited in 1930 in order to bless the movement’s flag. This was
a significant occasion and he was met by members from six different villages.
The report stated that the movement took on a life of its own after Trifa’s visit,
becoming increasingly independent of the ROC.76 In a confession from 1954 the
preacher Vasile Axinuţa said that he entered the Lord’s Army in 1935 because
his parish priest had been distributing Trifa’s books and pamphlets. As well as
going to church more regularly, he started attending meetings ‘where they sang
religious poems, prayed and read various lovely teachings from the Bible’.77
Members of the Lord’s Army were easily identifiable by their behaviour. As
well as giving up drinking, swearing and smoking, they sought to live holy lives
in their everyday communities. ‘The Lord’s Army is a movement of cleansing and
renewal, completely changing the lives of those who join it. In the Lord’s Army
we preach a spiritual rebirth; we preach a change in life’s foundations; we preach
a new life’.78 Every soldier was expected to own a Bible and to read it regularly.79
Following the example of the Apostle Paul – and imitating Repenter practices –
Trifa’s followers called each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ in their gatherings and
their writings. They greeted each other with the words ‘Peace be with you!’
(Pacea Domnului!) and responded, ‘And also with you!’ (Să fie cu noi cu toţi!).80
Encouraging what Max Weber called a Protestant work ethic, Trifa preached
that ‘work is good for the body and the soul. Laziness is a spiritual and a physical
disease’.81 Soldiers could buy a ‘medal’ in the form of a cross engraved with ‘In
the Lord’s Army’ and the words of 2 Timothy 2:3: ‘Share in suffering like a good
soldier of Christ Jesus’.82 As Trifa explained, ‘the symbol of the medallion is very
useful for travelling as well. On trains, at markets, etc., brothers who wear the
same symbol will know each other immediately and will rejoice in the Lord’.83
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
‘Serbarea Oastei Domnului din Câmpuri-Surduc’, Lumina satelor, 7 July 1929, 6.
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 9486, vol. 1, f. 317.
ACNSAS, Fond Penal, Dosar 1882, ff. 8–9.
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 122.
Ibid., 163.
Ibid., 218, 226–7.
Trifa, Munca şi lenea, 46.
‘Semnul celor întraţi în Oastea Domnului’, Lumina satelor, 19 April 1925, 7.
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 174.
156
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
They also celebrated differently. Trifa wrote that
A soldier of the Lord does not go to parties, dances, or balls because the way
that people party these days (with drunkenness and crazy games) is almost
completely in the service of the devil … A soldier of the Lord will only go to the
sorts of parties that do not have alcohol and dancing (concerts, theatre) … A
soldier of the Lord will not attend the evenings, discussions, and gatherings that
take place especially during winter in the taverns or at people’s houses. They will
not go because these too have come into the devil’s service. Today’s gatherings
are full of alcohol, filthy talk and dancing from which Satan reaps a rich harvest.84
These were not just empty words. A priest from the village of Hălchiu in Braşov
county wrote in 1928 that ‘all members of the society, led by the priest and his
wife, ended the year singing religious and national songs, reading from Father
Trifa’s books, and with a great deal of laughter and good cheer. At 11:45pm all of
the young people went to the church, where they rang the bells for a quarter of
an hour’.85 Lumina satelor reported that peasants sometimes resisted the Lord’s
Army, assuming that it was a Repenter sect.86 Trifa assured his readers that far
from being ‘a new sect’, ‘we, soldiers of the Lord, want to live out the Gospel …
just as the first Christians did. That is the whole “novelty” of the Lord’s Army’.87
Moreover, he published letters from former Adventists who had converted to
Orthodoxy because of the Lord’s Army and told stories of entire villages of
Nazarenes who had been brought back to Orthodoxy by his books.88
Trifa wrote that a person’s conversion should be visible to everyone around
them.
Look at this man from the village. His life has changed completely. Everyone
is amazed at difference. Arrogant and conceited before, now see him full of
humility, like a different man. From a lover of alcohol and worldly pleasures, see
him suddenly withdraw from taverns, parties, gatherings and from everything
that reflects the spirit of this world. Now he doesn’t like anything unless it is
connected to the Gospel and his soul. The tavern used to be his ‘church’; now
he loves the church, the school and anything that can provide food for his soul
and mind.89
84
85
86
87
88
89
Ibid., 168.
Gh. Constantin, ‘Cercul tinerimii adulte Sf-tul Gheorghe din comuna Hălchiu’, Gazeta Transilvaniei,
11 January 1928, 2.
‘Din fronturile Oastei Domnului’, Lumina satelor, 7 July 1929, 2.
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 217.
‘S’au întors la biserica străbună’, Lumina satelor, 15 March 1925, 2; ‘Pentru “Renaşterea” din Cluj şi
alţi criticanţi’, Lumina satelor, 7 July 1929, 6.
Iosif Trifa, Oglinda inimii omului (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane, 1927), 28.
The Lord’s Army
157
Trifa insisted on lay leadership of the Lord’s Army. There was to be no
hierarchy for this was a lay movement whose goal was to ‘help’ priests rather
than to replace them. ‘Every soul who has truly found the Lord becomes a
preacher of the Lord’, Trifa argued. ‘If lay people are not allowed to preach
during services’, he pointed out, ‘they still have the right to preach in church
when there are not services being held and even more to preach outside
the church’.90 The idea of lay ministry was not new, he insisted, quoting the
Apostle James, the fourth century preacher John Chrysostom, and the Russian
émigré theologian Sergei Bulgakov in his support.91 Preachers were usually
laypeople. Trifa wrote that the two most successful preachers in Sibiu were a
bricklayer and a carpenter. He commented that when he was a village priest
peasants came preaching Repenter Christianity ‘with their Bibles in their
hands and the people loved listening to them. A peasant preacher is attractive
and praiseworthy. But when these peasants came back again, this time dressed
in gentlemen’s clothes and calling themselves “preachers”, no one listened
to them. Everyone said that they were preaching for money. Dollars from
America destroyed everything’.92
By the mid-1920s Trifa’s preaching had moved from the usual Orthodox
interest in attending church and abstaining from particular sins to one focused
on personal conversion that was only possible because of Jesus’s death on the
cross. He expected his soldiers to have individual conversion experiences that
they could tell others about. ‘Everyone who turns to God has his own story about
how he woke from the sleep of sinners and rose again to a new life’, he wrote.93
Whereas the church as the Body of Christ lay at the heart of Orthodox teachings
about salvation, Trifa said that ‘it is not enough for someone to know the church.
They must also be built up by the gifts which it administers. It is not enough for
a church to sit in the middle of every village when people go to the tavern every
Sunday.’94 He saw his task as a preacher as being about making people aware of
their sins and offering them new life in Christ. ‘People do not lose their souls and
eternal life because of sins’, he argued, ‘but because they are not aware of sin, they
are not horrified by their sinfulness, they do not let the Spirit of the Lord work in
them to awaken them to a new life’.95
90
91
92
93
94
95
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 138.
Ibid., 129–38.
Trifa, Munca şi lenea, 44.
Trifa, Oglinda inimii omului, 17.
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 84.
Trifa, Oglinda inimii omului, 20.
158
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Genuine repentance was the first step to embracing new life. ‘To enter the
Lord’s Army does not mean to resolve to give up evil’, Trifa preached.
It means being struck down by sin and evil at the feet of the cross … To fall
weeping at the feet of the cross just as you are, full of evil … At the feet of the
cross you don’t just open the eyes of your mind, you receive a gift, a power and
help from above which changes your life. Standing at the feet of the cross, a
power from above changes your life. It changes your speech, your thoughts, your
paths and all your actions. The sacrifice changes you from an ‘old man’ into a
‘new man’, from a ‘worldly man’ into a ‘spiritual man’.96
Trifa repeated the same ideas again and again in his writing, often reformulating
the same phrase through various permutations for half a page or more. When
his articles are read out loud his style is that of a preacher giving his audience
time to reflect on an important point from different angles before moving on.
Salvation was an existential question for Trifa, resolved by a decision to
become a follower of Jesus. In language remarkably similar to that being used
by Repenter preachers, he wrote that ‘our victory rests on accepting the Lord. It
hangs on the question: Have you truly accepted the Lord and his gifts, or not?’97
In a book comparing the spiritual journey to the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt,
Trifa noted that after Christians break with the world and escape from slavery
they face ‘the great school of the wilderness’ where they must learn to live as
Christians before entering the promised land.98 Trifa warned that temptations
would continue to worry his soldiers after they had been saved but he reminded
them that Christ was mightier than the devil. Trifa envisaged the spiritual life as
one long battle with evil and explained that ‘every sin is a new channel for Satan;
it is lost territory in the war for our souls; it is a banner of the devil planted on
our battleground’.99 Not everyone who joined the Lord’s Army was ready for the
battle, Trifa said, and some would fall along the wayside. Constant vigilance was
therefore needed to help the whole army reach the heavenly kingdom.100
Members of the Lord’s Army did not only use prayer books to pray, because
‘praying with your own words is a sign of the work of the Holy Spirit’.101 They
sang together and the movement had its own song book. Trifa wrote, ‘as well as
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 74, 76.
Ibid., 61.
98
Iosif Trifa, Spre Canaan (Sibiu: n.p., 1936), 60.
99
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 57.
100
Iosif Trifa, Spre Canaan (1936), 42.
101
Trifa, Ce este Oastea Domnului?, 179.
96
97
The Lord’s Army
159
[singing] you can read from religious books, recite religious poetry, give speeches,
advice and other useful things. Come together in the name of the Lord and the
Holy Spirit will show you what to do, what to say, how to sing and how to “build
up each other” (1 Thessalonians 5:11)’.102 Lumina satelor frequently published
poetry written by members of the movement. These poems were usually upbeat
with simple rhyming schemes, encouraging others to continue ‘fighting the good
fight’.103 Others wrote poetry instead of letters when they joined the movement.
Iuon Doreanu, a bricklayer from Câmpulung Moldovenesc wrote:
As a master bricklayer
One never builds for no reason.
But I build myself
Into the army of God.
Help me Lord, Iuon
Awaken me from slumber
And make me useful
Under the flag of Christ the Lord.104
By the late 1930s most of the songs used in their gatherings were written by
three of Trifa’s followers – Ioan Marini, Traian Dorz and Simion Paraschiv.
The movement does not seem to have used existing Orthodox songbooks.105
After the Second World War the music of another Lord’s Army songwriter,
Nicolae Moldoveanu, would become popular in Repenter circles throughout
the country.106 Songs sung by the Lord’s Army reflected an intimate, friendly
relationship with a loving God on whom they depended to meet their every
need. As statements of belief that were repeated again and again, out loud and in
public, Lord’s Army songs defined the movement’s theology almost as strongly as
Trifa’s writings did. The words to their songs reflected Trifa’s message succinctly
and powerfully. In one song, Marini wrote
O Jesus, my beloved – my beloved
In this world I have erred – I have erred.
Till I met you – met you
Ibid., 179.
‘Alte poezii pentru cei din Oastea Domnului’, Lumina satelor, 4 January 1925, 3.
104
‘De vorba cu cei ce s’au hotărât la o viaţă nouă’, Lumina satelor, 11 January 1925, 3.
105
Traian Dorz, Din lupta Domnului. Popasuri în ‘istoria unei jertfe’. Poezii religioase. Cartea III
(Oradea: Grafica, 1939); Ioan Marini and Traian Dorz, Să cântăm Domnului: Carte de cântări
religioase (Oradea: Grafica, 1940).
106
Kis-Juhász and Teodorescu, ‘Bazele închinării evanghelice’, 733.
102
103
160
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Only evil did I do – did I do.
But now my only wish – my only wish
Is to be as God wants me – as God wants me.107
Music-making was a collective endeavour, such as the following song which was
written by ‘the sisters from Potlogi-Dâmboviţa’ and put to music by Paraschiv.
I want to sing, to sing with joy,
From now until the end,
For I know that I belong to Christ
And that I’m saved by him.
I will sing for all eternity,
Of Jesus my Beloved Saviour.
For he was put upon a cross,
And torture he endured,
The sin that oppressed my life
Was washed clean by his blood.
I will sing …108
The melodies were simple, without harmonies and within a vocal range that
could comfortably be sung by most altos or sopranos. Communal singing thus
did not need any musical accompaniment and could be done anywhere at
any time.
Although the Lord’s Army developed its own devotional literature and made
use of readings that Trifa thought would be widely accepted by an Orthodox
audience, it was not always clear where his ideas originated. Trifa was not the
only preacher who encountered this problem. Few of the stories and arguments
found in Romanian sermons during the 1920s originated in Orthodox circles. In
one of his writings Trifa described a book called The Mirror of the Soul (Oglinda
inimii omului celui din lăuntru) that had been popular in Orthodox circles at one
time. He said,
It was a translation from Slavic done by a monk named Macarie. The monk
Macarie said that this Reflection was written by a Russian monk. The truth is that
this book was written in France before 1820 by a certain I. Gossner in the spirit
of Roman Catholicism. The author was probably a Roman Catholic priest or
107
108
Ioan Marini and Simion Paraschiv, ‘O Isuse’, in Marini and Dorz, Să cântăm Domnului, 11.
Simion Paraschiv, ‘Eu vreau să cânt’, in ibid., 12.
The Lord’s Army
161
monk. The Slavic translation made only minor changes. This book has appeared
again in a Romanian translation in Bucharest in recent years. The new edition
is being distributed by sectarians in particular, giving people the (incorrect)
impression that it is a ‘Repenter book’ (the devil is a great charlatan: he keeps
people away from the Bible and other spiritual books by spreading the word that
they are ‘Repenter books’).109
The original author was actually Johannes Gossner, a Roman Catholic priest
from Germany who wrote it in 1812 before being defrocked fourteen years later
for converting to Protestantism. Gossner later became an important influence
on Evangelical Protestant missions. The book’s illustrations drew on a Flemish
iconographic tradition and reflected a pessimistic turning away from a corrupt
society towards internal piety.110 Trifa rewrote the book in his own distinctive
style, reusing many of its illustrations not only here but in a number of his
other books as well. Assuming that Trifa’s account of how Romanian audiences
responded to Gossner’s book is accurate, the story shows that it was not so much
the ideas in a book that mattered but the author’s reputation. Most Orthodox
readers would accept a book they believed had been written by a Russian monk
but rejected the same book if it was distributed by Repenters. Trifa, on the other
hand, appears to have been willing to turn a blind eye to where his ideas came
from so long as they resonated with his message.
So many of Trifa’s ideas looked and sounded like Evangelical Protestantism,
but his Orthodoxy was not questioned within Transylvania so long as he enjoyed
the patronage of Nicolae Bălan and the support of the Church press. But when
allegations appeared that Trifa had become a ‘sectarian’ they spread quickly.
Libertatea reported that the secret police began surveillance of Trifa in April
1929 on the grounds that he was the leader of a new sect. A newspaper known
for its antisemitism, Libertatea mockingly assumed that the secret police were
working on behalf of Jewish publicans whose business had been threatened by
Trifa’s temperance movement.111 His enemies agreed that there was something
wrong with his theology, however, and on 26 May the Bessarabian newspaper
Glasul monahilor wrote that
We often hear people talking – and some people even ask us – if what is written
in [Lumina satelor] flows out of a true Christian Orthodox spirit or whether it
Trifa, Oglinda inimii omului, 1.
Helmut Renders, ‘As origens do livro emblemático O coração do ser humano (1812) de Johannes
Evangelista Gossner: continuidade e releituras da religio cordis nos séculos 16 a 19’, Protestantismo
em Revista 29 (2012): 65–78.
111
‘Săraci cu duhul’, Libertatea, 30 May 1929, 3.
109
110
162
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
is Protestant. We admit that the question surprised us, but a lot of people are
saying: ‘Why don’t we see anything written about the Holy Virgin Mary, the
Mother of our God and Saviour, our about the saints, whom we know fought
vigorously for the light and truth of the Holy Gospels to come to us?’112
Iuliu Scriban later wrote that the accusations against Trifa originated with
Hieromonk Dionisie Lungu, the editor of Glasul monahilor, ‘whose insolence
propels him to involve himself in things he doesn’t understand’ (care-i dă obrăznic
cu gura înainte în treburile despre cari nu se pricepe două boabe).113 Renaşterea
(Rebirth) from Cluj picked up the question and in May 1930 a general episcopal
assembly at Cluj requested that the Holy Synod examine Trifa’s orthodoxy.114
Trifa retained the public support of Bălan and Scriban, however, and nothing
came of these accusations.
Trifa eventually broke with the ROC over money, not theology. According to
Trifa, his troubles began when he bought a new printing press from Germany
in November 1929. The press was for a new magazine, Oastea Domnului (The
Lord’s Army). Funded by donations and out of Trifa’s own pocket it sent him
into debt just when his health began to fail. Trifa writes that he was physically
drained from having spent several years writing almost night and day to publish
Lumina satelor and all of his books and pamphlets. He collapsed while visiting
a school, coughing up blood. Ironically, it was while he was in hospital that he
met a young teacher named Ioan Marini, who was in the same hospital also with
lung problems. Marini left his job soon after being discharged from hospital
and began working at Lumina satelor. He remained a loyal follower of Trifa
and became one of the movement’s key leaders after his death.115 As soon as
Trifa bought the new printing press, the archdiocese of Sibiu demanded that he
pay his debts to their press immediately. No longer able to pay the rent for the
bookstore to the archdiocese, he had to close it temporarily. Trifa then asked
Bălan if he could print Lumina satelor on his own press instead of that of the
archdiocese for two or three months to save money. Bălan refused, apparently
asking him with a smile, ‘You’re sorry that you bought the press now, aren’t you?’
According to Trifa, Bălan ‘hated the press from the beginning. The proof is that
Glasul monahilor, 26 May 1929, quoted in ‘Cronica’, Renaşterea (Cluj), 30 June 1929, 6.
Iuliu Scriban, ‘Aşa zisul Protestantism al “Oştii Domnului”’, Revista teologică 21, no. 8–9 (1931): 297.
114
Actele Adunării Eparhiale Ordinare a Eparhiei Vadului, Feleacului, şi Clujului ţinută la Cluj în anul
1930 (Cluj: Tiparul Tipografiei Eparh. Ort. Rom., 1930), 21–2.
115
Nicolae Marini, Învăţătorul Ioan Marini: O viaţă de apostol (Sibiu: Editura Oastea Domnului,
2002), 15.
112
113
The Lord’s Army
163
in five years His Holiness did not come down to see where the press was and
what it was like, or the Lord’s Army bookstore.’116
With Trifa seriously ill and struggling financially, in late 1930 Bălan decided
to merge Lumina satelor with Father Ion Moţa’s Libertatea. Based in Orăştie,
Moţa’s newspaper had been a popular voice of the Romanian national movement
in Transylvania since 1893. Aimed primarily at a peasant audience, it focused
much more heavily on nationalist politics than on religious topics and adopted
a strong antisemitic tone from 1925 onwards in support of Moţa’s son who was
a leader first of the antisemitic student movement and later of the fascist Legion
of the Archangel Michael.117 During the 1930s Bălan publicly sympathized with
the grassroots ultranationalism represented by the Legion and Gheorghe Gogan
argues that the merger of the two newspapers was an early attempt by Bălan to
transfer Trifa’s popularity to the Legion.118 Moţa had joined the Lord’s Army in
May 1930, suggesting that the collaboration between the two newspapers had
been planned at least since then.119 Moţa wrote in 1935 that he had suggested the
merger because Libertatea was struggling to sell enough copies, but complained
that working with Trifa cost him too much money. He explained,
I became horribly disillusioned within three or four months of merging the
leadership of the newspapers. I hadn’t known the men I was collaborating
with – the Trifa brothers. One, Iosif, was the editor; the other, Constantin,
was the administrator, but he did nothing without the approval of his brother.
They soon showed themselves to be more materialistic than I could ever have
imagined, greedy for riches at any price and by any means. The administrator
proved this far too quickly for my liking. One day I woke up to find that they
had confiscated my share from the 1931 calendar based on some calculations
that fell from the moon and the stars. The calendar had been entirely my work;
the only contribution of the administrator had been to sell it and take the money.
They gave me nothing from the 60,000 or 70,000 lei that should have been my
Gogan, ‘Viaţa şi activitatea’, 19; Nicolae Marini, Oastea Domnului: Istoria jertfei în mărturisirile
Pr. Iosif Trifa. Available online: http://roboam.com/Ortodoxie/oastea_domnului.htm (accessed
9 October 2019).
117
Moţa, 42 de ani de gazetărie, 78.
118
Gogan, ‘Viaţa şi activitatea’, 20. Ionuţ Biliuţă suggests that Bălan’s support for ultranationalist parties
dated from 1927 but did not become overt until several years later. Biliuţă, ‘The Ultranationalist
Newsroom’, 191. Among other things, Bălan intervened to secure the release of imprisoned
legionaries in 1933 and he gave an impassioned speech in support of the Legion following the
deaths of the legionaries Ion Moţa and Vasile Marin in 1937. Nicu Iancu, Sub steagul lui Codreanu:
Momente din trecutul legionar (Madrid: Editura Dacia, 1973), 73–4; Nicolae Bălan, ‘Fă Doamne să
rodeasca jertfa robilor tai Ioan si Vasile, pe pământul ţării noastre …’, Lumina satelor, 21 February
1937, 1.
119
‘“Oastea Domnului” şi la Orăştie’, Libertatea, 22 May 1930, 3.
116
164
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
share! They still have it. He still had to pay the interest on the precious press he
had bought. And he found it hard to part with the money. They used it all to pay
for the machine they had ‘poetically’ baptized ‘the bride of the wind’ … It took
the wind out of me to see my money going through the wheels of that machine
as well.120
The police produced a similar account in 1949, when the Lord’s Army had
become an illegal underground movement. They wrote that, by the late 1920s,
The soldiers began to focus more on the priest Trifa than on the bishop. The
priest Trifa began having beneficial business meetings with the Army at home
and he bought a printing press, opened a bookstore – separate, in Sibiu – and
began travelling abroad. He amassed quite a fortune through his business
dealings with the Army, which he did not want to give to the Church. Feeling
that the end was approaching he passed the Army press on to his son. Seeing
this Metropolitan Bălan sued Trifa on the grounds that he had claimed church
property as his own. He defrocked Trifa and put the leadership of the newspaper
Lumina satelor in the hands of other priests.121
Bălan officially removed Trifa from the leadership of the Lord’s Army after the
conflict over the ownership of Trifa’s printing press, but the metropolitan had
already effectively taken control of the movement in 1932. Trifa remained the
official editor of Lumina satelor but no longer signed any of the articles. At no
time did Bălan publically question Trifa’s theology, but as soon as it became clear
that Trifa no longer had Bălan’s support newspapers from Bucharest – including
Curentul (The Times), Universul (The Universe) and Duminica ortodoxă (The
Orthodox Sunday) – quickly declared the Lord’s Army a perilous sect.122
Under Bălan’s leadership the Lord’s Army began holding mass meetings at
which tens of thousands of people came to celebrate the movement. They were
originally based at Sibiu and then in other locations around the country.123 These
meetings increasingly resembled the gatherings of cultural associations and
political parties, with regional groups carrying their own flags and participants
benefiting from discounted train tickets. Now, instead of individual selfexamination entire crowds were subject to an ‘exam’ led by the metropolitan. He
inspected their ranks and members displayed their convictions through group
Moţa, 42 de ani de gazetărie, 67.
‘Istoric’, ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 10727, vol. 3, f. 1.
122
Teodor N. Manolache, ‘Biserica Ortodoxă Română ameninţată de o nouă sectă: Oastea Domnului’,
Duminica ortodoxă, 6–13 January 1935, 4–7, and 20–7 January 1935, 4–6.
123
Şoima, ‘Cele două feluri de adunări’.
120
121
The Lord’s Army
165
cheers.124 The newspaper also sympathized more openly with ultranationalist
causes, defending Nichifor Crianic’s ultranationalist newspaper Calendarul
(The Calendar), which had been temporarily shut down by the government
for its extremist views.125 The Lord’s Army also now formed close ties with the
Romanian Orthodox Brotherhood (Fraţia Ortodoxă Română, FOR) and enjoyed
the patronage of leading ultranationalist political figures such as Octavian Goga,
ensuring, as Bălan said, that it remained ‘closely tied’ to the ROC.126 Much
to Trifa’s dismay, his son Viorel became a leader of the antisemitic student
movement and joined the Legion of the Archangel Michael while studying
theology in Chişinău. He was arrested and tried for street violence at a student
congress in 1937 and later became a controversial archbishop of the Romanian
Orthodox Church in America before being deported because of his involvement
in the Holocaust.127 Despite his failing health, Trifa continued publishing Oastea
Domnului and left the running of Lumina satelor to Bălan.
The conflict came to a head in October 1934, when Trifa attempted to move
his printing press to Bucharest. Bălan argued that the press actually belonged
to the ROC because the money Trifa used to buy it had been earned while
he was in the employ of the Church. Trifa was defrocked and Lumina satelor
placed under the control of a committee.128 Without giving Trifa the right of
reply, Lumina satelor now published one article after another by Trifa’s former
supporters. They accused him of failing to respect the Church’s authority and
called on him to repent.129 Ion Moţa, the editor of Libertatea, was now given
a regular column in Lumina satelor and he contributed with a particularly
‘Chemare către ostaşii Domnului din întreagă ţară’, Lumina satelor, 28 May 1933, 1; ‘În legatură
cu marea adunăre a OD’, Lumina satelor, 4 June 1933, 1; G. Benescu, ‘Examenul Oştii Domnului’,
Lumina satelor, 11 June 1933, 1; Gh. Şecaş, ‘Înalţătoarea sfinţire de steag din Zarneşti: Ţară Bârsei s’a
mai cutremurat odată de suflarea cerească’, Lumina satelor, 25 February 1934, 1.
125
‘Sugrumarea Presei: Ziarul Calendarul, neînfricatul luptător pentru ieftinirea traiului, împedecat
ca să mai apară’, Lumina satelor, 15 May 1932, 1–2. On Calendarul, see Roland Clark, ‘Nationalism
and Orthodoxy: Nichifor Crainic and the Political Culture of the Extreme Right in 1930s Romania’,
Nationalities Papers 40, no. 1 (2012): 111–13.
126
‘Chemare’, Lumina satelor, 28 October 1934, 1; Gh. Şecaş, ‘Serbările religioase dela Sibiu’, Lumina
satelor, 4 November 1934, 1.
127
Viorel Trifa, ‘Ţie, sfântă suferinţă’, Cuvântul studenţesc, 10 February 1935, 12; ‘Procesul studenţilor
implicaţi în dezordinele dela Târgu Mureş’, Ardealul, 16 May 1937, 1–2; ‘“Procesul dela Tg. Mures”
se va judeca la Braşov’, Ardealul, 11 July 1937, 1; Valerian Trifa, Marginal Notes on a Court Case
(Jackson, MI: Valerian D. Trifa Romanian-American Heritage Center, 1988).
128
‘Marturişiri ce se impun: Lămuriri pentru fraţii ostaşi şi pentru cetitorii gazetelor “Lumina Satelor”
şi “Oastea Domnului”’, Lumina satelor, 20 January 1935, 1–2; Nicolae Bălan, ‘Oastea Domnului’ şi
Biserica (Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Archdiecezane, 1935). For Trifa’s side of the story, see Marini,
Învăţătorul Ioan Marini, 18–21.
129
‘Să se facă lumină!’ Lumina satelor, 27 January 1935, 1–4; Policarp Moruşca, ‘Cuvinte de durere’,
Lumina satelor, 3 February 1935, 1–2; Constantin Trifa, ‘Un cuvânt de lămurire’, Lumina satelor,
24 February 1935, 5.
124
166
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
scathing parable about a farmer who worked some land then claimed that it
was his when in fact the land belonged to God.130 The parallels with Trifa’s story
could not have been clearer. Trifa’s supporters complained that ‘some priests
began to write [new] statues for the Lord’s Army, organizing it with leaders,
bookkeepers, presidents, etc. … so as to raise money with receipts, invoices,
etc.’. Some left the movement altogether and joined Brethren communities.131
From this point on there were effectively two movements calling themselves
the Lord’s Army – one under Bălan’s authority and enjoying state support, the
other a grassroots movement loyal to Trifa, now with a second newspaper called
Isus Biruitorul (Jesus the Conqueror).132 With limited resources and battling ill
health, Trifa’s writings during the late 1930s focused on patiently suffering the
blows of fortune like a sheep being led to the slaughter.133 Trifa died in 1938,
but Ioan Marini and Traian Dorz took over his leadership role and maintained
the movement along the lines established by Trifa until it was banned by the
Romanian Communist Party in 1949.134 The communists arrested anyone who
continued holding meetings, but despite heavy persecution the movement
outlived state socialism and continues today as a parachurch movement
affiliated with the ROC.135
Trifa’s experiences shed a great deal of light on the religious changes taking
place during the 1920s. In particular, they suggest that it was not Repenters
who were ‘corrupting’ Orthodoxy, but that Orthodox leaders themselves were
transforming their church by drawing on spiritual practices they had discovered
in the West. Even though strong currents within the Lord’s Army had drawn
close to Repenter denominations by the end of the 1930s, Trifa originally
conceived of the movement as an anti-Repenter endeavour that resonated with
the approaches championed by anti-sectarian missionaries and preachers. The
initial impetus for the Lord’s Army came from Bălan, who had been trained in
Germany and who hoped to use grassroots organizing to strengthen the influence
of his metropolitanate within the ROC. Trifa’s emphasis on temperance was also
grounded in mainstream Orthodox preaching going back several decades, even if
Ioan Moţa, ‘Poveste pentru zilele noastre’, Lumina satelor, 10 February 1935, 3. Note the similarities
of Moţa’s story with Jesus’s parable of the bad tenants in Matthew 21:33–46.
131
ACNSAS, Fond Penal, Dosar 1882, ff. 8–9.
132
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 9486, vol. 1, ff. 317–18; Marini, Învăţătorul Ioan Marini, 20–8.
133
Iosif Trifa, Ca o oaie fără de glas (Sibiu: Editura Oastea Domnului, 2001).
134
Marini, Învăţătorul Ioan Marini, 26–104; Traian Dorz, Hristos: Mărturia mea (Sibiu: Editura Oastea
Domnului, 2005).
135
Gheorghe Precupescu, Traian Dorz şi vânturile potrivnice Oastea Domnului (Sibiu: Editura Oastea
Domnului, 2004); Sergiu Grossu, Un vânt de primăvară religioasă: Rânduiala luptei spirituale în
mişcarea ortodoxă Oastea Domnului (Sibiu: Editura Oastea Domnului, 2005).
130
The Lord’s Army
167
those preachers imitated Western temperance movements in both their language
and tactics. It is not clear exactly where Trifa found most of his material, but the
evidence suggests that he was not in conversation with Romanian Repenters.
Rather, Trifa read Catholic, Anglican and Evangelical Protestant writings,
taking what he found useful and ignoring the rest. Theologians such as Iuliu
Scriban and Irineu Mihălcescu also read foreign works, but whereas they had
the institutional authority to dictate what could and could not be adapted, Trifa
was successful only so long as he had Bălan’s support. Scriban, Mihălcescu and
others also only took edifying illustrations and scholarly research from foreign
texts, whereas Trifa eventually imported the doctrine of justification by faith
wholesale from Protestant writers. In shifting the emphasis of his faith away
from the church and its rituals to a message of personal conversion, Trifa exposed
himself to accusations that he was no longer Orthodox and was therefore an easy
target for anyone who wanted to take ownership of his printing press.
168
9
The Stork’s Nest
One of the most disputed renewal movements of the 1920s took place at
St Stefan’s Church in Bucharest, known as the Stork’s Nest. The parish priest
there was Teodor Popescu. The Stork’s Nest had been his father-in-law’s church
and Popescu became parish priest after the latter’s death. His sermons attracted
large numbers of people who flocked to hear him preach. Popescu’s preaching
emphasized the urgency of personal conversion and the idea of justification by
faith. Popescu’s pamphlet How to Bring Souls to Christ (1924) explained that
human suffering is a result of sin’s impact on the world, and that every one of his
readers was a sinner. But sinners need not despair, he wrote, because Jesus Christ
died for our sins. ‘And so the question is: how will you face the end? Saved or
unsaved? Regardless, the Saviour could come again today or tomorrow. Find out.
He asks nothing of you except to believe and you’ll be saved through grace.’1 Few
other Orthodox preachers of the day talked about a one-time conversion in this
way and few insisted that people decide to follow Jesus lest an unexpected death
might send them to hell. In fact, Orthodox writers taught that there are two
judgements of the dead: one, temporary judgement immediately after death to
beatitude or punishment while awaiting the resurrection, and a second, eternal
one at the time of Christ’s Second Coming.2
Popescu’s message found an enthusiastic audience. Among his listeners one
evening was the Minister of Denominations, Octavian Goga, who wrote that
when he visited the church,
1
2
Teodor Popescu, Cum aducem sufletele la Hristos sau planul de mântuire (Bucharest: Tip. ‘Cultura
Neamului Romănesc’, 1924), 27.
Gherontie Nicolau, Starea sufletelor după moarte: Scurtă privire asupra învăţăturii Sf. Biserici
Ortodoxe de Răsărit despre judecata particulară şi răsplata temporală a sufletelor celor adormiţi şi
folosul rugăciunilor bisericii pentru ele (Chişinău: Imprimeria Statului, 1923); Ioan Mihălcescu,
Catehismul creştinului ortodox (Cernica: Tipografia Bisericească din Sfânta Mânăstire Cernica,
1924), 25.
170
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
To my great surprise, the inside of the holy building was crammed with people
from the beginning, a strange assembly made up of people from every walk of
life … The priest’s whole body trembled, caught up in the magic of his words.
Screwing up his pale, ascetic forehead, his face came back to life, filled with
nervous fluid, and two drops of an unusual light shone deep in his eyes like
the canvases of [Jusepe de] Ribera. The devoted crowd listened carefully to his
analyses and followed the rhythm of his logic with a lively discomposure, leaving
the critical spectator with a profound conviction and an incontestable spiritual
message.3
Popescu had studied first at the seminary in Curtea de Argeş then at the
Central Seminary in Bucharest which was directed by Constantin Nazarie, the
author of numerous books attacking Seventh-Day Adventism.4 He graduated in
1907 before enrolling in a theology degree at the University of Bucharest. Popescu
later wrote that his early sermons focused on ‘the law, morals; I would choose a
vice such as drunkenness or licentiousness as an example and I would examine
it from every angle. People listened and said: “Yes, yes, that’s right!” Or I would
take a virtue: goodness, love, generosity. “Yes, yes, that’s right”, people would say,
happy to see these things scrutinized in an interesting way.’5 Most collections of
printed sermons from Orthodox preachers took a similar approach.6
Translating religion
It was Popescu’s cantor, Dumitru Cornilescu, who changed his theology and
preaching. Cornilescu was also a graduate of Bucharest’s Central Seminary,
studying there while it was directed by Iuliu Scriban.7 Cornilescu was a devoted
disciple of Scriban, who introduced his students to various Western authors,
including Frank Thomas and William James.8 ‘I was amazed’, Cornilescu later
3
4
5
6
7
8
Octavian Goga, ‘Răzvrăţirea de la “Cuibul cu Barză”’, Ţara noastră, 24 January 1923, reprinted in
Iosif Ţon, Credința adevărată (Wheaton, IL: Societatea Misionară Română, 1988), 137–40.
Nazarie, Duminica, botezul şi ierarhia bisericească; Constantin Nazarie, Cinstirea sfintelor icoane
şi adventiştii (Bucharest: Tipografia Cărţilor Bisericeşti, 1911); Constantin Nazarie, Combaterea
principalelor învăţături adventiste (Bucharest: Tipografia Cărţilor Bisericeşti, 1913).
Teodor Popescu, quoted in Horia Azimioră, Din viaţa şi lucrarea lui Teodor Popescu (n.p.: n.p.,
1988), 11.
For example, Cristea, Colecţiune de predici populare; Codreanu, Sămânţa de lângă cale; Iuliu Scriban,
50 de predici populare (Slobozia: Editura Episcopiei Sloboziei şi Călăraşilor, 2014).
Emanuel Conţac, Cornilescu: Din culisele publicării celei mai citite traduceri a Sfintei Scripturi (ClujNapoca: Logos, 2014), 48.
Crainic, Zile albe, 54.
The Stork’s Nest
171
wrote, ‘when I saw so many Christian books, because at the time there were
very few in Romania’.9 As Gala Galaction commented in 1921, ‘in Romania
books about religious and Christian topics are as unusual and rare as rain in
Egypt’.10 Cornilescu published his first translation, taken from the writings of
Frank Thomas, in Păstorul ortodox (The Orthodox Shepherd) in 1910. Thomas
was a charismatic preacher based in Switzerland, whose writings emphasized
evangelism, piety and personal conversion.11 Cornilescu continued translating
Thomas’s work along with those of the controversial writer and former Russian
Orthodox priest Grigorii Spiridonovich Petrov, serializing them in Revista
teologică (The Theological Magazine) during 1912 and 1913.12 Cornilescu was
well respected within the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC), and even had
some of his translations published in the Church’s official magazine.13 The fact
that Scriban encouraged his students to engage with an American psychologist
(James), a Swiss Protestant pastor (Thomas) and a defrocked socialist priest
(Petrov) shows how varied the influences on early twentieth-century Romanian
Orthodoxy were.14
In 1915, while a student in theology at the University of Bucharest, he
collaborated with another student Vasile Radu, who later became a celebrated
Orientalist, on translating a massive tome entitled The Orthodox Church and
Canon Law (1890) by the Serbian bishop and canon lawyer Nikodim Milaš.15
The translation was overseen by one of Cornilescu’s teachers, Irineu Mihălcescu,
who also wrote the preface for Cornilescu’s translation of Otto Quast’s attack
on the theory of evolution.16 Cornilescu also collaborated with Olga Gologan
in 1915, an erudite young nun two years his senior who had just established
an orphanage that would soon become a flourishing school, in translating a
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Dumitru Cornilescu, Cum m-am întors la Dumnezeu (Bucharest: Biserica Evanghelică Română,
2014), 5.
Gala Galaction, ‘E bine şi aşa’, Luptătorul, 21 July 1921, 1.
Luc Weibel, Croire à Genève: La Salle de la Réformation (XIX–XXe siècle) (Geneva: Labor et Fides,
2006), 136.
Conţac, Cornilescu, 50; Dim. I. Cornilescu după Petrow, ‘Principiile fundamentale ale civilizaţiei’,
Revista teologică 6, no. 4–5 (1912): 131–7; Dim I. Cornilescu după F. Thomas, ‘Chestiuni vitale’,
Revista teologică 7, no. 1 (1913): 17–27.
T. P. Păcescu, ‘Cine propagă ce este şi unde duce teoria despre un Mântuitor personal’, Noua revistă
bisericească, 1 May 1922, 34.
Despite his rupture with the Russian Orthodox Church, Petrov’s work was actually quite popular in
Romania. No less an authority than Nicodim Munteanu translated three of Petrov’s books between
1908 and 1918, all of which went through multiple editions. ‘Patriarhul Nicodim Munteanu’,
Patriarhii României. Available online: http://www.patriarh.ro/Nicodim/actpublicistica.php
(accessed 12 August 2019).
Conţac, Cornilescu, 50–1, 60 n. 52.
Otto Quast, Teoria lui Haeckel despre lume, trans. Dumitru Cornilescu (Craiova: Ramura, n.d.).
172
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
devotional calendar containing daily meditations by Frank Thomas.17 The
calendar was praised by Nicolae Bălan and found its way into the hand of Ralu
Callimachi, who immediately contacted him about translating the Bible into
Romanian.18 A noblewoman in an unhappy marriage, Ralu Callimachi was a
devoted Christian who had become a Baptist while visiting Paris roughly twenty
years earlier. She had personal experience translating and distributing the Bible
and was known for loaning books from her extensive library of Protestant
literature to enthusiastic young priests. Callimachi provided Cornilescu with
room and board while he worked. He took his monastic vows during the
summer of 1916 – presumably to avoid being conscripted into the army – but
he continued to live at Callimachi’s mansion at Stânceşti at least until he had
finished translating the New Testament in 1919.19
According to Cornilescu’s later writings, he yearned for the ‘new life’ that
he had read about in foreign books and was confused that the authors he was
reading were so fascinated with the Bible. ‘I didn’t like the Bible’, he wrote, ‘I had
a translation in front of me that was so bad that I couldn’t understand it … But
when I started to read it in another language, I understood it and liked it’.20
Despite his years of theological training, Cornilescu claimed that it was while
he was translating the Bible that he first understood universal sinfulness, the
idea that sin must be destroyed by hellfire and that Christ died on the cross
for the forgiveness of sins. He prayed: ‘Lord, I know only this book. You said
that it is your Word. I read in it that Christ died for me; I accept forgiveness for
myself and if you judge me it won’t be my fault because I have believed what it
says in your Word.’ 21 Newly converted, Cornilescu began his translation again
from scratch, telling himself that ‘up until now the translation has been done
by my old self. I am a new person and must have a new translation done by my
new self.’22
There were, of course, other Romanian translations of the Bible available.
The most common was the ‘Iaşi Bible’ (1874), which was the first to use the
Latin alphabet adopted in the early 1860s. Nicolae Niţulescu revised the Iaşi
Bible during the 1890s and the British Bible Society published several editions
17
18
19
20
21
22
Dumitru Cornilescu and Olga Gologan (trans.), Îndrăsniţi! Cetiri biblice şi meditaţiuni pentru fiecare
zi a anului, după F. Thomas (Bucharest: Tip. Gutenberg, 1915); cited in Conţac, Cornilescu, 53 n. 29.
Conţac, Cornilescu, 53.
Ibid., 53–61; P. Chirică, ‘Adevăratul scop al “Adevărului creştin”’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 January
1924, 248.
Cornilescu, Cum m-am întors, 6.
Ibid., 11.
Ibid., 13.
The Stork’s Nest
173
of Niţulescu’s translation between 1906 and 1921, trying to keep up with various
changes in orthography.23 In 1911 the Bible Society commissioned Iuliu Scriban
and Nicodim Munteanu to produce a new translation, but both men were
increasingly busy with their official functions and were unable to complete
the project.24 Munteanu continued working on his translation – mostly from
Russian – after retiring to a monastery in 1923. He published a new version
of the New Testament (1924) and Psalms (1927), as well as being responsible
for twenty-four of the books of the Old Testament that appeared in the Synod
Bible of 1936.25 Gala Galaction began his own, more literary, translation in 1921,
eventually inviting Vasile Radu to join as his collaborator. Galaction began doing
readings of his Bible on the radio in 1923 and published his New Testament in
1927, but the complete translation was not finished until 1937.26
Cornilescu’s translation was based on a revised version of Louis Segond’s
French Bible from 1910.27 Relying entirely on Callimachi’s financial support,
Cornilescu established the Romanian Evangelical Society under whose auspices
he published his New Testament (1920), Psalms (1920) and Old Testament
(1921).28 His translation met with a deafening silence from most critics.29 Those
who did comment on it were critical but generally positive. Though he later
described it as ‘tendentious and heretical’, Galaction’s initial impression was that
‘this is and will remain a commendable work, providing worthwhile reading for
everyone’.30 The newspaper Dacia wrote that ‘Cornilescu’s New Testament is far
superior to any previous translation in Romanian. It has a suppleness and fluency
which the others lack entirely … The language of Cornilescu’s translation flows
out of the heart of our people.’31 His old teacher, Iuliu Scriban, thought it ‘very
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Conţac, Cornilescu, 38; Sfânta Scriptură a Vechiului şi a Noului Testament (Bucharest: Societatea de
Biblie Britanică, 1921).
Conţac, Cornilescu, 37–9.
Ibid., 99; ‘Patriarhul Nicodim Munteanu’.
Galaction, Jurnal, vol. 3, 112, 301, 309; ‘Citiri din Biblia nouă’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 41,
no. 5 (1923): 394; Atanasie Mironescu, ‘Noul Testament’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 46, no. 2
(1928): 169–85.
La Sainte Bible, trans. Louis Segond (Paris: Alliance Biblique Universelle, 1910); Emanuel Conţac,
‘Influenţa versiunii Segond asupra versiunii Cornilescu 1921’, in Receptarea Sfintei Scripturi. Între
filologie, hermeneutică şi traductologie, ed. Eugen Munteanu (Iaşi: EUAIC, 2011), 122–45.
Cornilescu, ‘Ce este cu “Adevărul Creştin”’, 99–100; Noul Testament, trans. D. Cornilescu (Bucharest:
Societatea Evanghelică Română, 1920); Cartea Psalmilor sau Psaltirea, trans. D. Cornilescu
(Bucharest: Societatea Evanghelică Română, 1920); Biblia sau Sfînta Scriptură, trans. D. Cornilescu
(Bucharest: Societatea Evanghelică Română, 1921).
Noua revistă bisericească 3, no. 1–2 (1921): 269, quoted in Conţac, Cornilescu, 72–3.
Galaction, Piatra din capul unghiului, 83; Galaction, ‘E bine şi aşa’, 1.
Quoted in a letter, J. W. Wiles to J. H. Ritson, 27 November 1920, in Conţac, Cornilescu, 118.
174
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
colloquial’.32 In contrast, the Greek Catholic priest and scholar Victor Macaveiu
noted that, although Cornilescu’s translation was ‘very original’, it lacked ‘that
archaic, old hue of the word of God, it is missing what on bronze statues we
would call tarnish – that which increases the value of the statue’.33 The popular
reception of Cornilescu’s Bible was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. It sold out
almost immediately and representatives of the British Bible Society who were
trying to decide whether to publish Cornilescu’s translation themselves heard it
praised everywhere they went.34
The only genuinely hostile reviews came from the priests D. Mangâru and
Petru Chirică, who attacked Cornilescu’s translation on the grounds that his
choice of words in describing ‘a Sabbath rest’ (o odihnă de Sabat) in Hebrews
4:9 supported the Seventh-Day Adventist position that Christians should
worship on Saturdays.35 In addition to attacking his opponents’ knowledge of
Greek, Cornilescu’s response was that the Adventists erred ‘in their twisted
interpretation of the text, not in the meaning of the text, which should be
preserved as it is and not changed for the sake of it or out of fear of one teaching
or another’.36 Possibly anticipating this criticism, in 1920 Cornilescu had already
serialized his translations of two pamphlets by English and American authors
attacking Adventist doctrines.37 His Bible was popular with Repenters, who began
recommending Cornilescu’s translation almost immediately.38 Despite various
concerns about the precision of Cornilescu’s language and over his translation of
the Greek word dikaiosynē (righteousness) as neprihănire (sinlessness) instead
of dreptate (rectitude), the British Bible Society adopted it as their official
Romanian version and released a revised edition in 1924.39
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
Letter, R. Kligor to J. W. Wiles, 21 January 1921, in Conţac, Cornilescu, 121.
Victor Macaveiu, ‘Spre o nouă ediţie a Scripturii româneşti’, Cultura creştină (1921), quoted in
Conţac, Cornilescu, 72.
Conţac, Cornilescu, 118, 126, 128, 145.
D. Mangâru, ‘Odihna creştinismului (Contra Adventismului)’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 July 1921,
123–45; D. Mangâru, ‘Adaos la “Odihna creştinismului şi răspuns la Domnului D. Cornilescu”’, Noua
revistă bisericească, 15 February 1922, 404–5; Petru Chirică, ‘Condiţiuni la studiul de combatere al
adventismului’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 41, no. 2 (1922): 114–16. All three articles are quoted in
Conţac, Cornilescu, 73.
Dumitru Cornilescu, ‘Odihna creştinismului’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 December 1921, 292. Cf.
Dumitru Cornilescu, ‘Câteva lămuriri în chestiuni de traducere a Bibliei’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română
41, no. 8 (1923): 567–70.
R. A. Torrey, ‘Trebue să ţină creştinii sabatul?’ trans. D. Cornilescu, Noua revistă bisericească,
January 1920, 146–8; A. J. Pollock, ‘Adventismul în faţa Scripturii’, Noua revistă bisericească, June
1920, 40–2. Both are cited in Conţac, Cornilescu, 74–5 n. 93.
‘Citiţi Noul Testament’, Buna vestire, January 1921, 8.
Conţac, Cornilescu, 79–85.
The Stork’s Nest
175
Preaching revival
After having been ‘born again’ while translating the Bible, Cornilescu began
holding Bible studies with young soldiers who were about to be sent to the front
and who wanted to know if they would go to heaven when they died. The group
met regularly and Cornilescu taught them Christian songs he had translated. He
wrote that the lives of these young men were profoundly changed and that, when
they were persecuted for their beliefs by a group of schoolboys throwing rocks,
they began to pray and converted their persecutors through prayer.40
After finishing the first edition of his Bible, Cornilescu returned to St Stefan’s
Church in Bucharest. Excited by the power of Cornilescu’s message about
‘turning to God’, Popescu began to preach it until he too was convicted of his
sins and ‘born again’.41 ‘Like any believer, I would have been ready to say that
Jesus died for his ideas’, Popescu wrote. ‘Never, absolutely never, had I noticed
the words in the creed: “And he was crucified for us”. Had I noticed I would have
thought that the word “us” applied to anyone else just not to me.’42 Together they
began holding evening Bible studies for men in the parish, postponing teaching
women until eventually a group of women occupied the church and demanded
to participate in these studies as well.43 Meetings at the Stork’s Nest became more
and more popular and in 1921 Iuliu Scriban began encouraging his students to
visit the church to hear Popescu preach.44
When he published his collected sermons Popescu received positive
reviews from other renewal-oriented Orthodox publications such as Iosif
Trifa’s Lumina satelor, Vartolomeu Stănescu’s Solidaritatea and Renaşterea,
and Teodor Păcescu’s Noua revistă bisericească.45 Spiritual change can only
come about by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Cornilescu asserted, quoting
sermons by Bălan and Stănescu to support his case.46 Cornilescu established
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
Cornilescu, Cum m-am întors, 13–20.
Ibid., 22–3; Teodor Popescu, ‘O mărturisire care poate fi unora de folos’, Noua revistă bisericească,
1 August 1923, 124–30. Note that in his account, Popescu does not credit Cornilescu with having
taught him the doctrine of justification by faith but claims that he arrived at this conviction on his
own through the working of the Holy Spirit.
Tudor Popescu, Isus vă chiamă (Bucharest: n.p., 1939), 19.
Dumitru Cornilescu, ‘Ceva despre activitatea evanghelizatoare dela “Cuibul cu barză”’, Noua revistă
bisericească, 1 June 1923, 91–2.
Azimioră, Din viaţa şi lucrarea, 23.
C. Diaconescu, ‘Iisus va chieamă!’ Noua revistă bisericească, 1 June 1923, 112–13; Azimioră, Din
viaţa şi lucrarea, 24–5; Manea S. Popescu, ‘O recapitulare a discuţiunilor polemice provocate de
învăţăturile propoveduite la biserica Cuibul cu Barză şi o concluzie’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 June
1923, 103.
Cornilescu, ‘Ce este cu “Adevărul Creştin”’, 95, 97.
176
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
a regular magazine known as Adevărul creştin (The Christian Truth), which
aroused suspicion among some of his colleagues once Adventist and Brethren
preachers began buying and distributing it on the grounds that Cornilescu had
‘come over to our side’.47 The opening editorial of Adevărul creştin outlined its
mission statement as:
[The magazine] knows that humans do not naturally have this life, which is a
gift of God obtained through faith in a personal Saviour, whose death atones for
our sins, calling us to live in close connection to the One who gave His life for
us. Second, it is aimed at the children of God who have passed from death to
life, have been born again, and who live bound up with their personal Saviour.48
Although he appreciated Adevărul creştin and collaborated closely with
Cornilescu, Teodor Popescu never published in its pages and claimed to have
no connection with Cornilescu’s Romanian Evangelical Society.49 Iosif Trifa
from the Lord’s Army, on the other hand, actively promoted one of Cornilescu’s
books, The Human Heart: God’s Sanctuary or the Devil’s Workshop (1922), saying
that ‘there are few books in Romanian which can do more for Christ and for the
salvation of the souls of our people than this one’.50
During the early 1920s Cornilescu also began publishing his own translations
of a variety of Protestant books, such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a
seventeenth-century Baptist work that pictured the spiritual life as a pilgrimage
to heaven that involves sticking to the straight and narrow path while avoiding
temptations and false teachings.51 Other British authors he translated include
works by the Brethren preachers Charles Henry Machintosh and George Müller,
as well as Charles Challand’s biography of Müller.52 Both Machintosh and Müller
emphasized that regular study of the Bible needed to be central to the Christian
life and both were committed to making the Gospel as accessible as possible
by explaining Christian theology in simple language. Cornilescu published
translations of books by several American authors associated with the Moody
Bible Institute and the YMCA, including James Henry McConkey, Reuben
47
48
49
50
51
52
Ibid., 99 n. 2; P. Chirică, ‘Adevăratul scop al “Adevărul creştin”’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 January
1924, 248–9.
Quoted in Păcescu, ‘Cine propagă’, 36.
T. Popescu, ‘O scrisoare a părintelui Teodor Popescu’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 May 1922, 63.
Iosif Trifa, ‘O carte de mare folos sufletesc’, Lumina satelor, 11 February 1923, 5.
John Bunyan, Călătoria creștinului sau calea spre fericirea de veci, trans. Dumitru Cornilescu
(Bucharest: Editura Societății de Cărți Religioase, 1923).
Charles Challand, O minune din vremurile noastre: viaţa şi lucrarea lui George Müller, trans. Dumitru
Cornilescu (Bucharest: Societatea Evanghelică Romînă, 1922); Alexandru Măianu, Viața și lucrarea
lui Dumitru Cornilescu (Bucharest: Editura Stephanus, 1995), 73.
The Stork’s Nest
177
Archer Torrey and Samuel Dickey Gordon.53 All were committed preachers
and evangelists who emphasized giving up control of one’s life into God’s hands
and cultivating holiness. McConkey helped establish the Africa Inland Mission,
Torrey worked closely with Dwight L. Moody and was one of the three editors of
the essays collected in The Fundamentals, which became the foundational text
of American fundamentalism, and Gordon’s series of ‘Quiet Talks’ contained
detailed instructions about holy living. Cornilescu also translated works by the
Swiss apologist Frédéric Bettex, who argued that the Bible was in agreement with
modern science, and the Lutheran theologian Gerhard Hilbert, who encouraged
local churches to commit themselves to missionary work in their communities.54
Cornilescu collected and translated Protestant hymns as well as books,
providing ways for believers at the Stork’s Nest to express their faith through
song. Most Orthodox songbooks of the period included slow, reflective pieces
emphasizing God’s might and holiness, humanity’s need for mercy, and
honouring the Virgin Mary. In a 1928 collection assembled by Gheorghe Cucu,
for example, one finds titles such as ‘God is with us, understand you peoples and
worship’, ‘Blessed be, Christ our God’ and ‘You are truly worthy of our praise,
Mother of God’.55 The songs in Cornilescu’s collection were more upbeat and
the musical score was written for piano, in comparison with Cucu’s songbook,
which was arranged for choral singing. Cornilescu’s hymns focused on the idea
that Jesus saves and requires an individual response from believers as well as on
the joy and security to be found in God. His first songbook included hymns such
as Charlotte Elliott’s ‘Just as I am, without one plea, / But that Thy blood was
shed for me’ (1835), William Doane’s ‘Safe in the Arms of Jesus’ (1868), or Philip
Doddridge’s ‘O happy day that fixed my choice / On Thee, my Saviour and my
God!’ (1755). In Cornilescu’s hands Doddridge’s Reformed Calvinism became
clearly Arminian: ‘Happy day, when I took Jesus as my Saviour! / O how good
it seems to me now that I chose Him then’.56 Any sense that one’s salvation was
determined (‘fixed’) by God beforehand is missing in Cornilescu’s translation,
being replaced by an overwhelming emphasis on an individual’s choice to
believe. As is all church music, Cornilescu’s hymns were dogmatic confessions
53
54
55
56
James Henry McConkey, Ce înseamnă viaţa predată în slujba Domnului, trans. Dumitru Cornilescu
(n.p.: n.p., n.d.); Măianu, Viața și lucrarea, 73.
Gerhard Hilbert, Exista spirit? (Bucharest: Libraria Max Kendler, n.d.); Măianu, Viața și lucrarea, 73.
‘Cu noi este Dumnezeu’, ‘Bine eşti cuvântat’ and ‘Vrednică eşti’ in Cucu, Zece cântece religioase, 8–10,
14–15, 28–31.
‘Ferice zi …’, in Dumitru Cornilescu, 47 cîntări creştineşti cu note muzicale (Bucharest: Societatea
Evanghelică Romînă, 1922), 14.
178
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
that people would reflect on every time they sang them. Cornilescu asked to be
allowed to renounce his monastic vows in July 1923, and the Church was only
too happy to release him.57
Heresy charges
Other priests who had been preaching revival wanted to know why the Stork’s
Nest was flourishing while they were preaching to empty churches.58 The
answer, they said, was that Popescu and Cornilescu were importing foreign
ideas. Nae Ionescu accused Popescu and Cornilescu of threatening the security
of the Romanian state by promoting English Protestantism and of subordinating
Orthodoxy to the Anglican Church through their (alleged) association with the
YMCA.59 The two preachers vehemently denied these accusations, claiming that
‘ours is a purely Romanian movement and has no other goal than the moral
regeneration of our people in the only way possible, today and for all time:
by disinterestedly preaching the Gospel of Christ’.60 Both sides in this dispute
claimed that they were working for the salvation of their country. The highest
praise that anyone gave Cornilescu’s translation was that it was ‘pure Romanian’,
and reflected the language of the people instead of the wooden language of the
Church.61 Popescu’s supporters responded by questioning whether Orthodox
priests were truly serving the nation. They accused priests of corruption and of
exploiting the poor for their own financial gain: ‘What do Christ’s shepherds do
when confronted with this odious spectacle [of politicianism]?’, Dimitrie Nanu
wrote. ‘Even though the Saviour told them clearly: you cannot serve both God
and money, still there are some – many, in fact – who do not wear a cross on
their neck or its commands in their hearts, but instead carry the heavy steel key
from the bank or cooperative.’62 An accomplished poet and translator, Dimitrie
Nanu was an outspoken supporter of the Stork’s Nest and was also a patron of
the Christian Youth Association (ACT) while it was affiliated with the YMCA
during the 1920s.63
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 109/1923, f. 3.
On Manea Popescu’s attempts at evangelism, see ‘Evanghelizare ortodoxă’, Noua revistă bisericească,
1 May 1923, 116.
Un Ortodox (probably N. Ionescu), ‘Pentru apărarea ortodoxiei’, Ideea europeană 4, no. 111 (1923): 2.
T. Popescu and D. Cornilescu, ‘Domnule Director’, Ideea europeană 4, no. 113 (1923): 2.
Letter, J. W. Wiles to J. H. Ritson, 27 November 1920, in Conţac, Cornilescu, 118.
Nanu, Iisus vă cheamă, 6.
Ciornea, Sandu Tudor, 281.
The Stork’s Nest
179
Both sides also accused each other of being in league with Jews. In 1922
Teodor Păcescu wrote that ‘the propaganda of these Protestant sects is a product
of World Judaism, which uses any means to provoke diversions and confessional
conflicts so that the economic and political dominance of Judaism might be
followed by religious dominance’.64 Similarly, in 1924 seven members of the
Stork’s Nest attacked Gala Galaction for his philosemitism: ‘He is alone among
Romanian writers to have given himself body and soul to the Jews and their
interests. He has written the most perverse articles, both before and after he
became a priest, confusing the Romanian spirit and sustaining the interests of
Masonic Judaism.’65
The issue came to a head in December 1923 after Galaction convinced the
metropolitan to appoint a couple of other priests to serve alongside Teodor
Popescu at St Ştefan’s Church. It soon became apparent that Popescu was
altering the liturgy, removing prayers asking the Virgin Mary and the saints
to ‘have mercy on us!’ and emphasizing instead that it was Christ alone who
has mercy and saves us.66 Galaction caused arguments at the Stork’s Nest when
he invited himself to preach there in December and then finally persuaded the
metropolitan to charge Popescu with heresy.67 In Orthodox Christianity the
liturgy defines how believers relate to God. It binds together everything from
the veneration of the saints to the interpretation of Scripture and beliefs about
salvation. As the archpriest of Arad, Florea Codreanu wrote in his explanation
of the liturgy in 1940, ‘Christ the Lord comes to us through the Holy Liturgy, it
makes peace between us and God, and it creates bonds of brotherhood among
us’.68 Irineu Mihălcescu taught that the Church’s liturgy evolved directly out of
Jesus’s breaking of the bread at the Last Supper.69
Moreover, the concrete action of changing the liturgy was one of the few ways
that Popescu’s opponents could clearly prove his heterodoxy. The words of the
liturgy were widely available in prayer books and how it should be performed
64
65
66
67
68
69
T. P. Păcescu, ‘Biserica in pragul anului 1922’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 January 1922, 324.
Dincescu Bolintin et al., Lupta între Dumnezeu şi Mamonă: Între predicarea Evangheliei şi acatist
(Bucharest: Tipografiile Române Unite, 1924), 6. The signatories of this pamphlet were V. Dincescu
Bolintin, F. Demetrescu Mirea, Th. C. Tomescu, Dumitru M. Pherekyde, Niculae Flipescu, Gh.
Ceauşescu and Christian Theodora.
Galaction, Jurnal, vol. 3, 151–2.
Ibid., 153–6; [Gala Galaction], ‘Cuvinte de lămurire’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 41, no. 15 (1923):
1131.
Codreanu, Cunoştinţe liturgice, 39.
Mihălcescu, Explicarea Sfintei Liturghii, 7–9; Ioan Mihălcescu, Rânduiala şi tâlcuirea pe scurt a
Sfintei Liturghii (Râmnicul Vâlcea: Tipografia Episcopul Vartolomeiu, 1935), 5–6.
180
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
was clearly spelt out by the Church.70 Trapping heretics is difficult, Păcescu
noted, because ‘sectarians do not attack the teachings of the Orthodox Church
directly, but throw themselves over the religious identity (conştiinţa religioasă) of
our people and try to subdue them’.71 What was really at stake, Păcescu claimed,
was the national identity of the Romanian people, but what could be proven was
that Popescu had changed the liturgy.
Manea S. Popescu, who had gone to the same school as Teodor Popescu,
published an open letter to him in March 1922 in the pages of Noua revistă
bisericească asking him to answer five questions:
1) Whether he considers that we owe our salvation to Christ the Savior alone,
and that we can obtain it only through faith – our only contribution.
2) If he has eliminated the veneration of the Virgin Mary.
3) If he permits the veneration of the saints.
4) If prayers for the dead are useless.
5) Why, after he has renounced several Orthodox beliefs, he remains in the
Church and benefits from its wealth.72
The two priests debated these questions in Noua revistă bisericească for the
next two years. Manea Popescu’s questions and Teodor Popescu’s responses are
instructive because they represent a candid attempt at clarifying the boundaries
of Romanian Orthodoxy during a period of institutional and theological renewal.
The disputing parties disagreed on where authority in the Church lay. Dumitru
Cornliescu said of himself that ‘the whole time I was reading their books, some of
which were very good, I was as blind as any blind man’. Păcescu retorted: ‘A blind
man with a degree in Orthodox theology! … It appears that Deacon Cornliescu
became a monk as a hobby’.73 One thing that the opponents of the Stork’s Nest
would not allow was the idea that their education was worthless. Manea Popescu
attacked Teodor Popescu by demonstrating that Irineu Mihălcescu, who had
taught them both, disagreed with the latter’s definition of salvation.74 Quoting
Mihălcescu when confronted with the Bible, Teodor Popescu said, was like a
man who ‘when attacked by a machine gun defended himself with a pistol’.75
70
71
72
73
74
75
Dimitrie Lungulescu, Manual de practică liturgică (Bucharest: Tipografiile Române Unite, 1926);
Gherontie Nicolau, Îndrumătorul liturgic (Bucharest: Tipografia Cărţilor Bisericeşti, 1939).
Teodor P. Păcescu, ‘Propaganda neo-protestantă’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 January 1924, 241.
Manea S. Popescu, Noua revistă bisericească, 15 February 1922.
Cornilescu, ‘Ce este cu “Adevărul Creştin”’, 91–101.
Manea S. Popescu, ‘Problema mântuirii’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 October 1923, 160.
T. Popescu, ‘Răspuns la răspunsul Părintelui Manea Popescu’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 May 1922, 65.
The Stork’s Nest
181
When Teodor Popescu refused to discuss the veneration of the saints until he
had studied the Bible more closely, Manea Popescu responded, ‘Why are you
a still a priest and still accredited then? Doesn’t it strike you that your answer
insults our Faculty of Theology which gave you your accreditation?’76 ‘In matters
of God’s truths’, Teodor Popescu wrote back, ‘I accept only arguments made with
Holy Scripture, which is the Word of God, the Word that promises to be eternal’.77
Teodor Popescu maintained that when Christians spoke of ‘the church’ in
the sense of Tradition, they meant ‘certain people within the church who wrote
about certain things and whose writings were accepted by the majority and
retained’. Furthermore, ‘these people [were] obliged to take note of the Gospel’,
so, obviously, their writings did not replace the Bible. ‘Whoever invokes the
authority of the church independent of the authority of the Gospel’, Teodor
Popescu claimed, ‘bases history on the history books; and whoever invokes
the authority of the Gospel bases history on the documents’.78 ‘The Bible is
not Protestant’, Cornilescu added, so why accuse people who quote it of being
Protestants?79
Manea Popescu appears to have accepted the idea of citing Scripture to support
one’s argument because his next contribution was suddenly full of quotes from
the Bible.80 Gala Galaction, on the other hand, complained that Popescu and
Cornilescu’s readings of the Bible were naive and simplistic. Galaction was quite
happy to use the Church Fathers, ecumenical councils and the Holy Liturgy
as authorities alongside the Bible, and to use them to interpret it. ‘Most of the
time when people wander from the truth it is because of the interpretation of
Holy Scripture’, Galaction explained, but ‘in the church of the Saviour, dogmatic
teachings and decisions are in the hands of the episcopal college, that is to say, in
the hands of the gathering of the hierarchs. The episcopal college is the treasurer
of the knowledge of the church and guards our whole lives in Christ.’81
Another of their major disagreements lay in their different understandings
of salvation. Salvation is ‘a gift’, according to Teodor Popescu. A Christian draws
near to God by reading the Bible and can be assured that ‘he has forgiveness
and peace with God through the blood of Jesus; based only and exclusively on
76
77
78
79
80
81
Manea Popescu, ‘Un ultim răspuns şi câteva lămuriri Preotului Teodor Popescu’, Noua revistă
bisericească, 1 March 1922, 13.
Teodor Popescu, ‘Poate cineva să spună că e mântuit?’ Noua revistă bisericească, 1 May 1923, 44.
Ibid., 44.
Dumitru Cornilescu, ‘Tot cu privire la foaia “Adevărul creştin”’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 October
1923, 163.
Popescu, ‘Problema mântuirii’, 159–62.
Galaction, Piatra din capul unghiului, 44.
182
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
what the Lord has done and continues to do for him, saying “Thanks to him
I am saved”’.82 ‘That’s not the way things are’, responded Manea Popescu. Rather,
Christians are united with God only through ‘the pouring of the invisible grace
of God into the soul through the seven holy mysteries instituted by the Saviour
himself ’. Moreover, Manea Popescu maintained, ‘salvation is a divine-human
act and … reading the New Testament is a great thing but it is not sufficient for
the salvation of one’s soul’.83 Only Protestants believed that ‘the Lord’s chosen,
those He has called, are saved “through grace”, without any personal merit or
contribution’, he said, concluding that therefore the preachers at the Stork’s Nest
must be Protestants.84 In a book written soon after the Stork’s Nest scandal, Irineu
Mihălcescu argued that although humans had fallen from grace the possibility
of goodness had not completely died in the human soul. Humanity’s separation
from God made it impossible for them to return to their prelapsarian state by
themselves – ‘either man must rise to God or God must come down to man’. Like
Manea Popescu, Mihălcescu asserted that sanctification requires God’s grace
and man’s contribution of faith and good works.85
Later, Manea Popescu outlined another reason why he did not believe in the
idea of a personal Saviour. He wrote,
On the basis of the Gospel and the writings of the holy apostles, our Orthodox
Church teaches that the Saviour is the Saviour of everyone and thus of each
individual person. It also teaches, again on the basis of the New Testament,
that every soul can share in the salvation perfected at Golgotha and in the
sanctification that the Holy Spirit brings through the church which Jesus
established. He gave the means of salvation to the church (baptism = redemption
from original sin) and sanctification through the seven mysteries administered
by the hierarchy. The Protestant theory of a personal Saviour does away with
these intermediaries and makes the personal Saviour into a direct Saviour.86
The doctrine of justification by faith marginalized the role of the Church.
If Christ alone saves us, then why do we need priests? ‘This explanation of
the problem of salvation is a great danger’, Păcescu concluded, ‘because it
does away with all the institutions of Orthodoxy, in particular the hierarchy,
82
83
84
85
86
Teodor Popescu, Iisus vă cheamă, quoted in Manea S. Popescu, ‘Din învăţăturile celor dela Cuibu cu
Barză’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 May 1923, 52.
Ibid., 52.
Popescu, ‘Problema mântuirii’, 159.
Vicovan, Ioan Irineu Mihălcescu 141–2.
Manea Popescu, ‘Cuibul cu Barză’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 42, no. 4 (1924): 212.
The Stork’s Nest
183
which is the mediator of salvation’.87 The Church and its priests are crucial
to Christianity, Păcescu insisted, because ‘if the problem of salvation forms
the basis of Christianity, the purpose of the church is none other than the
realization of salvation, and the priest is the one who realizes salvation by
means of grace and through the teachings available to him, applied through
Christian pedagogy’.88 Gala Galaction wrote that ‘whoever does not believe
in the church of Jesus Christ – “I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic
church” – does not believe in the Holy Spirit which guides it and thus does not
believe in the promises and the power of the Saviour either’.89 The Stork’s Nest
‘is Christian, it is based on the Gospel’, Petru Chirică wrote, ‘but it does not
support the Orthodox Church’.90
As Manea Popescu mentioned in his opening letter, rumours had spread
that Popescu was teaching people at the Stork’s Nest not to venerate the saints.
Popescu defended himself by claiming that
regarding the worship of the Holy Virgin Mary and the saints, I remain within
the general Orthodox formula, which is: worship God and venerate the
saints. Unlike the Catholics, who canonize saints so often and present them to
the world as beings that one can do business with and bow down to – and the
Protestants, who ignore them entirely – the Orthodox Church has arrived at the
happy formula I quoted above.91
No one was convinced. Moreover, Cornilescu appeared to have replaced the
Orthodox saints with another pantheon of heroes. In a letter to Noua revistă
bisericească, Petru Chirică asked,
What use to me are examples of missionaries in China who – according to
D. Cornilescu – died for Christ, when everyone knows that they were Protestants,
Adventists, or Catholics, when in the riches of my Orthodoxy I have so many
missionaries at hand (John Chrysostom, Basil and Great, Gregory of Nazianzus,
St George, St Dumitru, St Nicholas, St Peter and Paul, who also died for Christ).92
87
88
89
90
91
92
Teodor Păcescu, ‘Mişcarea dela biserica Cuibu cu Barză din Bucureşti’, Noua revistă bisericească,
1 January 1924, 264.
Ibid., 245.
Galaction, Piatra din capul unghiului, 26.
Chirica, ‘Adevăratul scop’, 249.
Tudor Popescu, Spulberarea Învinuirilor (Bucharest: Tipografiile Române Unite, 1924), 10–11.
Petru Chirică, ‘Scrisoare părinţilor Teodor Popescu şi Manea Popescu’, Noua revistă bisericească,
1 May 1923, 88.
184
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Defrocked
The committee of priests appointed to judge Popescu’s case tells us something
about how close to ecclesiastical centres of power his opponents were. The
ten-person committee included Iuliu Scriban, Irineu Mihălcescu, Gala
Galaction and Constantin Nazarie, all of whom had been teachers and/or
opponents of Popescu and Cornilescu. Other members included P. S. Platon,
Atanasie Popescu, D. Georgescu, the dogmatician and canon lawyer Dimitrie
Boroianu, the historian Niculae Popescu and George Gibescu, who had written
his undergraduate thesis on the importance of hierarchy in the Church. The
committee concluded that ‘it is as clear as day that the priest Teodor Popescu
does not confess our Orthodox faith’.93
Popescu’s reputation by this stage and the state’s attitude toward him was
clearly summed up in a report by a policeman named ‘Agent 1040’ from
15 December 1923, which uncritically reproduced all of the accusations
against him:
The priest Theodor Popescu, the parish priest of ‘The Stork’s Nest’ church,
is a follower of the Protestant religion. The ‘British Religious Society’ from
London (England) has been established for the purpose of preaching these
beliefs and conducting religious propaganda. This society has followers in every
country and with their help seeks to universalise the Protestant religion. The
first follower and fanatical preacher of this religion in Romania was the priest
Cornilescu, who had to leave the country because of his preaching and found
refuge in Switzerland, where he has settled and taken up citizenship. The second
follower is the priest Theodor Popescu, the parish priest of ‘The Stork’s Nest’
church, who has preached the Protestant religion for more than two years,
ignoring the existence of the saints, the Holy Virgin Mary, the icons, and the
church, believing only in God and Jesus Christ. Moreover, he preaches living a
life conformed with Holy Scripture, which is to say that he shows his followers
how to live perfect lives.
Thus, his beliefs are very similar to those of the Baptists and in part to those
of the Adventists, only that he recognises Sunday as the Christian holy day. In
this short time the priest Th. Popescu has won the souls of many believers and
has become a saviour to them – as he indeed claims to be – preaching sermons
in church. He held public meetings in the Stork’s Nest school with the aim
93
A.[rhimandrit Iuliu] S.[criban], ‘Chestiunea de la biserica Cuibul cu Barză’, Biserica Ortodoxă
Română 41, no. 15 (1923): 1129–30.
The Stork’s Nest
185
of spreading his religious cult, later moving to 5 Sebastopol Street, where he
continues to preach his message.
This conversion of large numbers of believers scandalized public opinion and
on being made aware of what was taking place at this church, the metropolitanprimate ordered that Th. Popescu be replaced by the priest from the ‘Duşumea’
church. An incident took place during his first service, however, provoked by the
followers of the priest Th. Popescu, for which reason the church was definitively
shut down.
In addition, the priest Th. Popescu receives money from the Anglican society,
which is clearly demonstrated by the following cases: During one discussion,
the priest Th. Popescu stated that he would seek refuge in Switzerland if the
authorities suppressed his activities; his only escape being the priest Cornilescu,
whom I have shown has close ties with the Anglican society. The priest Th.
Popescu printed a number of pamphlets for spreading his beliefs, which he
distributes to his followers and which are read in church during services. In
addition, he helps any poor person who asks for his help. Some time ago two
Belgians who had come to Bucharest became victims of theft. Not having a penny
they went to the Anglican school and asked for help from the English women
there. When they heard what had happened they sent him to their priest, Th.
Popescu, who without hesitating gave them the sum of 3,000 lei, which greatly
impressed public opinion. It is therefore quite clear that the above-mentioned
priest receives money from the Anglican society for spreading the Protestant
religion because his philanthropy could not come from his own modest material
situation.94
After Teodor Popescu had been defrocked, a number of priests continued to
attack the Stork’s Nest on the front page of major cosmopolitan newspapers
such as Adevărul (The Truth) and Dimineaţa (The Morning), accompanied
by occasional polemical replies from Popescu and his supporters.95 These
newspapers were particularly interested in whether or not Popescu was a
‘heretic’, a label which Scriban, at the very least, refused to give him, focusing
instead on the fact that Popescu’s ideas were ‘intolerable’ to the Orthodox
94
95
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 105254, f. 2.
Contributions supporting Popescu included D. Nanu, ‘Conflictul de la biserica Sf. Ştefan’, Dimineaţa,
6 January 1924, 13; Marieta G. Vasilescu, ‘Incidentul dela biserica Sf. Ştefan’, Dimineaţa, 21 January
1924, 1; Tudor Popescu, ‘Mişcarea dela “Cuibul cu Barză”’, Dimineaţa, 27 January 1924, 1; Tudor
Popescu, ‘Mişcarea dela “Cuibul cu Barză”’, Dimineaţa, 28 January 1924, 1.
186
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Church.96 One contributor after another told the newspapers how sorry they
were for Popescu, who had been their friend. They gave him public advice
about where he went wrong and how he could mend his ways.97 The danger of
Cornilescu’s brand of Christianity, Păcescu later wrote, is that ‘he managed to
mask the new Protestant garments in which he had dressed his Orthodox soul
and to present himself to his colleagues, refugee theologians from Moldavia,
even military chaplains, as Orthodox, as someone who wanted to deepen our
Orthodox Christianity’.98 Păcescu’s observation that Cornilescu’s initial success
happened in the east is significant, because it came at a time when civil servants
from Bucharest – including priests – saw it as their duty to ‘civilize’ the eastern
provinces, dominating them through the imposition of a centralized bureaucracy
and by appointing people from Bucharest to positions of influence.99
Galaction wrote a lengthy book aimed at Orthodox priests who were confused
about where Popescu had erred, and Mihălcescu published a series of articles
outlining the Orthodox Church’s position on the veneration of the saints.100
They did not want others to follow Popescu’s example. Greek Catholic writers
repeated earlier claims that Popescu had connections with the Anglican Church,
something that his Orthodox opponents now bitterly denied because of their own
increasingly frequent meetings with Anglicans. In turn, the Orthodox polemicists
claimed that they knew Anglican priests who were disgusted with Popescu’s
behaviour.101 Popescu’s supporters responded in kind, claiming that he had been
defrocked only because the other priests were jealous of his popularity.102 They
published several pamphlets defending Popescu and defaming his detractors.103
Lorin, ‘Conflictul de la biserica Sf. Ştefan: Ce ne spune archim. Scriban’, Dimineaţa, 3 January 1924,
1; Arhim. Scriban, ‘Răfuială pe chestiunea Cuibul cu Barză’, Dimineaţa, 24 January 1924, 1. Cf. I.T.,
‘O încercare de schismă’, Dimineaţa, 4 January 1924, 1; Aida Vrioni, ‘Incidentul dela biserica Sft.
Ştefan’, Dimineaţa, 12 January 1924, 1; Vasile Dinescu-Bolintin, ‘Incidentul dela biserica “Cuibul
cu Barză”’, Dimineaţa, 17 January 1924, 1; ‘Procesul preotului dela biserica Sf. Ştefan’, Dimineaţa,
18 January 1924, 1; N. Batzaria, ‘Ereziile’, Adevărul, 19 January 1924, 1–2.
97
Lorin, ‘Conflictul de la biserica Cuibul cu Barză: Ce ne spune d. Vasile Dincescu-Bolintin’, Dimineaţa,
4 January 1924, 5; Lorin, ‘Conflictul de la biserica Sf. Ştefan: Părerile părintelui I. Popescu-Mălăeşti’,
Dimineaţa, 5 January 1924, 1; ‘Chemarea clerului!’ Dimineaţa, 19 January 1924, 1–2; Gala Galaction,
‘Gala Galaction are cuvântul!’ Dimineaţa, 30 January 1924, 1; G. Galaction, ‘Cazul dela biserica
“Cuibul cu Barză”’, Dimineaţa, 31 January 1924, 1.
98
Păcescu, ‘Uitându-ne înapoi’, 1.
99
Livezeanu, Cultural Politics.
100
Galaction, Piatra din capul unghiului; Irineu Mihălcescu, ‘Clasicitatea creştină şi cultul sfinţilor’,
Biserica Ortodoxă Română 42, no. 3 (1924): 145–53; Irineu Mihălcescu, ‘Cultul sfinţilor în faţa
descoperirii Dumnezeşti’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 42, no. 4 (1924): 195–201; Irineu Mihălcescu,
‘Învaţătura bisericii despre cultul sfinţilor’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 42, no. 5 (1924): 290–5.
101
‘Cuibul cu Barză şi anglicanismul’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 42, no. 2 (1924): 122.
102
[Gala Galaction], ‘Cuvinte de lămurire’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 41, no. 15 (1923): 1130.
103
Nanu, Iisus vă cheamă; D. Nanu, Lupta între Evanghelie şi tipic, între logică şi sofism (Bucharest:
Atelierele ‘Adeverul’, 1924); Popescu, Spulberarea Învinuirilor; Dincescu Bolintin et al., Lupta între
Dumnezeu şi Mamonă.
96
The Stork’s Nest
187
Though he himself did not attend the Stork’s Nest, Cornilescu’s former
classmate Nichifor Crainic defended Popescu in Gândirea, an avant-garde
literary magazine he edited. Crainic wrote that Popescu’s
preaching addresses a society whose moral conscience long been fast asleep
and in which the triumph of sin has become normal. This preacher whips us
as one would whip a horse, and his blows are felt in society … This exceptional
willingness to identify his personal life with the doctrine that he preaches is
powerful, as is his moral beauty, which raises him above the rest of us and
especially above those who are leading his persecution.104
According to the secret police, Popescu and Crainic remained friends and in
1928 they collaborated on a petition to prevent the singer Josephine Baker from
performing in Romania.105
These exchanges soon degenerated into personal attacks. Manea Popescu
claimed that the nationalist and antisemitic Crainic sided with Popescu simply
because Galaction was a Marxist and a philosemite. He asserted that Crainic was
too stupid to understand theology and too fat to look in the mirror.106 Galaction
claimed that he had been approached by a father whose daughter had been
converted by Cornilescu and was planning to marry him. When challenged on
this by his superiors, Galaction said that Cornilescu fled to Germany, leaving the
girl behind.107 Cornilescu’s biographer, Alexandru Măianu, writes that shortly
before leaving the country Cornilescu ‘had a conflict with General Rusescu,
whose sister frequented Christian meetings. General Rusescu felt insulted by
Cornilescu, who told him that he was a sinner because he was not a believer,
and the general challenged him to a duel’.108 Whatever his motives, Cornilescu
left the country for Germany several months before Popescu’s trial, apparently
at the urging of Miron Cristea. Supported first by Ralu Callimachi and then
by gifts from congregations he spoke at, he spent time as an itinerant preacher
and Bible teacher in England, France, Germany and Switzerland, before finally
settling in Switzerland in 1929.109 Following a request by Duminica ortodoxă, in
Nichifor Crainic, ‘Cuibul cu Barză’, Gândirea 3, no. 11 (1924): 259.
ACNSAS, Fond Penal, Dosar 13206, vol. 2, f. 336.
106
Manea Popescu, ‘Cuibul cu Barză’, 211–15.
107
[Galaction], ‘Cuvinte de lămurire’, 1130.
108
Alexandru Măianu, Viaţa şi lucrarea lui Dumitru Cornilescu (Bucharest: Editura Stephanus, 1995),
84.
109
Ibid., 84–104; Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv BAR, E 4264 Bundesamt für Polizei, Dosar 1989/146,
vol. 266, f. K 10651, Dumitru Cornilescu, 1933–49. I am grateful to Emanuel Conţac for providing
me with Cornilescu’s Swiss naturalization documents.
104
105
188
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
June 1924 the Holy Synod recommended that priests no longer use Cornilescu’s
Bible on the grounds that ‘it does not correspond to the normative canonical
text of the Orthodox Church … [and] is done tendentiously, in a spirit that
encourages the reader to arrive at interpretations that are completely opposed to
the doctrines of the Orthodox Church’.110 Nonetheless, publications by the Lord’s
Army continued using it long after Cornilescu had fallen out of favour with the
rest of the ROC.111
Popescu’s place as parish priest at St Ştefan’s Church was taken by Father Marin
C. Ionescu, who was an occasional contributor to Noua revistă bisericească.112 A
promising young priest who obtained his doctorate on the topic of ‘The Priest
and the Harmonizing of Social Classes’ (1925), Ionescu became a prominent
defender of Romanian nationalism and of Orthodoxy as a Romanian religion.113
Few prominent churchmen of the inter-war period avoided scandal at one time
or another, and in 1933 the Stork’s Nest was again upset following accusations
by the cantor that Ionescu was mishandling parish funds and was promoting
political causes. Parishioners quickly came to his defence and Ionescu remained
in his post.114
Tudorists
Popescu’s followers continued meeting in private homes and distributed
pamphlets and tracts teaching Popescu’s message.115 Originally known as the
‘Born Agains’ (Noii Renăscuţi), Popescu’s movement soon spread to the nearby
city of Ploieşti, where the parish priest complained to the police that they
held meetings at night time ‘when everyone needs peace and quiet’.116 It was
not always easy to organize their gatherings, and in February 1925 two priests
‘Cronica Bisericească Internă’, Biserica Ortodoxă Română 43, no. 4 (1925): 232; quoted in Conţac,
Cornilescu, 77.
111
Conţac, Cornilescu, 77 n. 108.
112
Marin C. Ionescu, ‘Moş Toader si Adventismul’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 May 1921, 67–9.
113
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 12413, f. 1; Marin C. Ionescu, ‘Unii cu Anglicanii! Alţii cu
Papistaşii! Niciunul cu ortodocsii?!’ Glasul Monahilor, 12 July 1936, 1–2; Mircea Păcurariu, ‘Ionescu,
Marin’, in Dicţionarul teologilor români. Available online: http://biserica.org/WhosWho/DTR/I/
MarinIonescu.html (accessed 7 August 2017).
114
Epitropii, Consilierii, şi Enoriaşii bisericii Sf. Ştefan, ‘Cuibu cu Barză’, Mi-e milă de popor: Spulberarea
unei calomnii (Bucharest: Tipografia Astoria, 1933).
115
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 16/1924, ff. 49, 57, and Dosar 167/1925, f. 6; Amzioară, Din viaţa şi
lucrarea, 40–51.
116
ANIC, Fond MCA, 167/1925, f. 3.
110
The Stork’s Nest
189
from Bucharest attacked one of their meetings accompanied by forty to fifty
people. The police report stated that the building would have been destroyed
had the authorities not intervened.117 In November 1925 Popescu admitted to a
representative of the British Bible Society that he was still unsure what he meant
his community to be. He would not return to the Orthodox Church, he did not
feel attracted to any of the major Protestant or Repenter churches, nor did he
particularly want to start his own church.118 Popescu’s indecision meant that
congregations of his followers formed organically, often without any deliberate
attempt by Popescu to establish them. Soon communities of ‘Tudorists’
(Tudorişti) or ‘Christians According to the Scriptures’ (Creştini după Scriptură),
as they were increasingly called, appeared in towns and villages throughout
the counties of Ilfov, Ploieşti, Braşov, Argeş, Ialomiţa, Constanţa and Tutova.
Without trained pastors, these communities depended entirely on lay leadership
and on books and songs supplied by Popescu.119 Women originally prayed in
Tudorist gatherings, but on Cornilescu’s advice Popescu demanded that they
remain silent during the church services.120 Tudorists also ceased making the
sign of the cross or greeting each other with the phrase ‘Christ has risen!’ at
Easter time, signalling their separation from Orthodox forms of piety.121
As did Repenters, Tudorists referred to each other as ‘brother’ and ‘sister’,
and usually spread their beliefs through one-on-one conversations. They also
began publishing a magazine entitled Cuvântul Adevărului (The Word of the
Truth), which contained short sermons, devotional readings and commentaries
on passages of the Bible.122 Although it was highly illegal, some Tudorists posted
tracts to non-believers through the mail or handed them to passers-by on the
streets. Individuals caught doing so were promptly arrested.123
By 1936 Tudorist meetings in Bucharest were standing-room only,
with hundreds of people in attendance, but the movement still lacked any
official recognition.124 In one pamphlet from 1937 the Tudorists described
themselves thus:
Ibid., ff. 10–11.
Memo by Bishop J. H. Greig for Archbishop Davidson, 16 November 1925. Lambeth Palace Library,
Douglas 88, ff. 245–9. I am grateful to Emanuel Conţac for sharing these documents with me.
119
Amzioară, Din viaţa şi lucrarea, 47, 60.
120
Ibid., 44.
121
ACNSAS, Fond Informativ, Dosar 189663, f. 118.
122
Two issues of Cuvântul Adevărului from 1937 can be found in ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar
13408, vol. 5, ff. 135–47.
123
ACNSAS, Fond Informativ, Dosar 189663, ff. 13, 35–46, 53–75.
124
Ibid., Dosar 189663, ff. 1–2.
117
118
190
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
We are Christians. That is what we are called. But because the authorities ask
us for a name to differentiate ourselves from other churches and directions, we
call ourselves ‘Christians According to the Scriptures’. Our goal is to strengthen
believers spiritually through sharing the Gospel and through evangelism to bring
the Lord Jesus to those who do not know him and who are not born again …
Towards the Orthodox Church and towards the other denominations, according
to the instructions of Scripture (Romans 12:18), our attitude is one of peace and
of non-interference in their business.125
Neither prohibited nor sanctioned by law, Tudorists had trouble with the police
throughout the inter-war period. They had their authorization to meet approved
or rescinded every few years without warning.126 They had to request permission
from the Ministry of Denominations to establish meeting houses (case de
rugăciune) on a case-by-case basis. Approval in one village did not guarantee
approval in the next. Preaching without authorization led to the immediate
closure of Tudorist meeting houses.127 Local policemen remained confused
about whether ‘Tudorists’ and ‘Christians According to the Scriptures’ were one
and the same thing, and wrote to their superiors that Tudorist preachers ‘seek
to break apart our ancestral religious beliefs, weakening the unity of the state
in the process’.128 A lay Orthodox movement known as the ‘Patriarch Miron
Association’ lobbied to have the Tudorists banned entirely in 1937, but without
success.129
In 1939 the government decided to close Tudorist meeting houses entirely so
Popescu agreed to merge his Church with the Brethren in Romania.130 By this
stage the only serious difference between the two groups was that Brethren only
baptized adults whereas Tudorists continued baptizing infants as the Orthodox
Church did.131 The Tudorists did not gain much breathing room, however, as
when Ion Antonescu took power in 1940 he severely limited religious freedom
and the Brethren, together with other Repenter groups, faced the threat of
deportation to Transnistria during the Holocaust.132 After the Romanian
Communist Party came to power, Popescu and other Tudorist preachers such
Memoriu cuprinzând arătarea pe scurt a învăţăturii şi organizaţiei ‘Bisericei Creştinilor după
Scriptură’ in ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 13408, vol. 5, f. 123.
126
ACNSAS, Fond Informativ, Dosar 189663, ff. 110–13.
127
Ibid., Dosar 189663, ff. 77–8; ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 149/1936, ff. 2, 6, 28, 38, 40, 48.
128
ANIC, Fond MCA, Dosar 149/1936, f. 4. Cf. ACNSAS, Fond Informativ, Dosar 189663, f. 85.
129
ACNSAS, Fond Informativ, Dosar 189663, ff. 4–5, 9.
130
Ibid., f. 10; Amzioară, Din viaţa şi lucrarea, 66–7.
131
ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, Dosar 13408, vol. 5, f. 122.
132
Amzioară, Din viaţa şi lucrarea, 70–4; Viorel Achim (ed.), Politica regimului Antonescu faţă de cultele
neoprotestante: Documente (Iaşi: Polirom, 2013).
125
The Stork’s Nest
191
as Gheorghe Cornilescu and Emil Constantinescu frequently disparaged the
Romanian Communist Party in their sermons. They encouraged their followers
to have as little as possible to do with the state, including rejecting socialist
literature, theatre and cinema.133 The secret police kept these men under strict
surveillance, but Tudorist gatherings in Bucharest still regularly attracted crowds
of between 1,000 and 1,500 people in 1953.134 Popescu’s failing health made him
less of a threat to the authorities, who preferred to limit the freedom of activity
available to Repenters than to close them down entirely.
133
134
ACNSAS, Fond Informativ, Dosar 259045, vol. 1, ff. 1–2, 5–7.
Ibid., ff. 92, 105.
192
Conclusion
A variety of different currents shaped Romanian Orthodoxy during the
1920s. Working together with the National Liberal Party, Miron Cristea
expanded the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) into the Banat, Maramureş,
Transylvania, Bukovina, Bessarabia and Dobruja. He imposed a centralized
system of church governance by suppressing autonomous tendencies that
were emerging in Transylvania and Bessarabia. Cristea placed the Church at
the centre of Romanian nation-building, insisting that the ROC was the only
church that should be associated with the nation-state. He and others used
arguments about ‘Tradition’ when framing their demands, though they were
well aware that in practice over the past 500 years Tradition had been about
reconciling the competing claims of Church and state by making the best out
of unsatisfactory circumstances. Given Orthodoxy’s potential as an ideology
of social cohesion, its long tradition of supporting state authority and the fact
that many of the other churches were associated with ethnic minorities, the
government acquiesced to the ROC’s demands for dominant status. The vast
majority of police and gendarmes were ethnically Romanian and religiously
Orthodox. They too were enthusiastic about wielding power over religious
minorities given that their forebears had had to submit to Ottoman, Russian or
Austro-Hungarian rule for so long.
Cristea did not establish the new patriarchate alone. He was surrounded –
and frequently challenged – by a handful of talented leaders, almost all of whom
had been trained abroad and were appointed soon after the end of the First
World War. Nicolae Bălan, Gurie Grosu, Vartolomeu Stănescu and Visarion
Puiu used their positions to reinforce Romanian Orthodox privilege within the
regions under their control. These men did their utmost to transform ordinary
Romanians into enthusiastic Christians. They introduced an unprecedented
number of initiatives that encouraged priests and lay Christians to work together
to cultivate their spirituality. The Lord’s Army, the Rebirth society, the Take and
194
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
Read circle and the Federation of Christian Students Associations in Romania
all successfully communicated church messages about temperance, morality
and Bible reading to audiences which had hitherto not expressed a great deal
of interest in church activities. A new generation of talented teachers helped to
shape young priests into successful evangelists and preachers. Irineu Mihălcescu,
Constantin Nazarie, Iuliu Scriban, Gala Galaction, Ioan Popescu-Mălăeşti,
Grigore Cristescu and others inspired their students with what they had learned
during their studies abroad. Reforming priests such as Iosif Trifa, Teodor
Popescu, Dumitru Cornilescu, Grigore Comşa, Manea S. Popescu and Teodor
Păcescu grew up intellectually and spiritually under their tutelage. Preaching,
Bible reading, temperance, swearing and church attendance now became the
standards by which Orthodox spirituality was judged.
Not all of the reform efforts of the 1920s strengthened church unity. The
calendar reform of 1924 alienated large sections of the population in Moldavia
and Bessarabia, giving birth to Old Calendarism. The preaching of Popescu and
Cornilescu at the Stork’s Nest turned out to be too Protestant for the taste of
many and eventually created a new Repenter denomination. Similarly, Trifa’s
articles and books taught about individual piety and a personal Saviour with
almost no reference to saints, icons, priests or liturgy. Bălan tried to sideline
Trifa, but many members of the Lord’s Army insisted on following Trifa out
of the more institutionalized and nationalist movement Bălan hoped for.
When university students associated with the FASCR began sharing God’s love
through good works their elders had to step in to redirect their energies towards
nationalist politics.
The changes inside 1920s Orthodoxy all took place before a backdrop of
Repenter Christianity. Despite their small numbers, the spectre of Repenters
dominated Orthodox discussions about religion in Romania. In a 1937 book
entitled The Prophetic Spirit, the deacon Vasile Ionescu wrote that ‘the religious
problem of our Orthodoxy today has two main aspects: one involves crushing
unbelief and eliminating everything that belongs to sectarian teachings; the other
is the strengthening of the faithful through their clergy, raising their religiousmoral lives to a higher level’.1 Most Orthodox writers would have agreed, seeing
combating sectarianism and teaching the laity as two sides of the same coin.
Almost every attempt to create a new Orthodox initiative was justified in terms
of anti-sectarianism. Apart from the fact that they ignored national chauvinism
and failed to respect the church hierarchy, Repenters excelled at the sort of
1
Vasile Ionescu, Duhul profetic (Piteşti: Tipografia ‘Artistica’ P. Mitu, 1937), 3.
Conclusion
195
religious practices reforming priests most valued. They cherished their Bibles
and read them avidly, they did not drink, smoke or swear, they prayed regularly
and were determined to share their faith regardless of the cost. Even antisectarian missionaries had little choice but to imitate the strategies and practices
of Repenters if they hoped to combat them. Repenters were also associated with
the sorts of foreign influences that Orthodox leaders felt powerless to stop. It
is telling that anti-sectarian writers blamed Repenters for the rise of atheism,
evolutionary theory and immorality. Even if Repenters taught none of those
things, their religion came from the same countries as jazz music and the theory
of evolution so the two became connected in the minds of anti-sectarian writers.
The relationship between Repenters and changing Orthodox practices was
more complex in Romania than scholars have suggested it was elsewhere. Bojan
Aleksov and Ksenija Končarević argue that in Serbia the Nazarenes taught God
Worshippers and other Orthodox Christians to read their Bibles and to seek
to live holier lives. They suggest that the increase in devotional literature, new
translations of the Bible, vernacular liturgies and the spread of grassroots holiness
movements in Serbian Orthodoxy were a direct result of Nazarene influences.2
In Romania, on the other hand, the sorts of changes associated with Repenter
religion transformed Orthodoxy at the same time that Repenter communities
grew and spread. Bible reading increased as a natural consequence of the
rise of literacy levels and the number of religious newspapers and grassroots
associations increased because the number of all newspapers and associations
was growing exponentially during this period. Orthodox leaders used the threat
that Repenters would take over the country to promote their new initiatives,
but those initiatives were not conscious imitations of Repenter practices. Nor
did Repenter beliefs and parachurch movements develop organically out of
Orthodoxy, as Sergei Zhuk argues happened in the Ukraine.3 Repenters explicitly
acknowledged American, British, German, Swiss and French influences,
distributing foreign literature and occasionally receiving money or diplomatic
support from abroad.
Despite what Orthodox writers claimed, Repenters were not the major
conduit through which Romanians learned about Western Christianity. For the
2
3
Bojan Aleksov, ‘The Nazarenes Among the Serbs: Proselytism and/or Dissent?’ and Ksenija J.
Končarević, ‘The Influence of the God Worshipper Movement on the Language Policy and Religious
Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church’, in Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern
Europe, ed. Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović and Radmila Radić (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017),
105–89.
Zhuk, Russia’s Lost Reformation, 3.
196
Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania
most part, Orthodox leaders discovered Western Christianity for themselves,
without Repenter influence. When priests such as Iosif Trifa or Dumitru
Cornilescu wanted edifying literature to give their followers there was simply
too little written by Romanian Orthodox Christians. They thus had little choice
but to turn to Catholic and Protestant devotional writings which contained
doctrines such as justification by faith and sola scriptura alongside messages
about temperance and morality. Similarly, so many of the bishops, archbishops
and metropolitans in inter-war Romania had been educated abroad because the
standards available in Romanian theological faculties before the First World War
were too low. Social Christianity, modern Biblical hermeneutics, lay activism
and revivalism had all developed within Western Christianity, as had the idea of
temperance leagues, self-help associations and religious newspapers. Regardless
of the impact of missionaries and organizations such as the YMCA, during
the 1920s Christians of all persuasions had unprecedented levels of access to
and contact with the West thanks to new travel and communication networks
connecting the globe.
Over the centuries Eastern Orthodoxy has had a long tradition of developing
through interaction with Western Christianity, sometimes incorporating
Western ideas and practices and sometimes creatively rejecting them.4 Yet
chauvinistic nationalism was so entrenched during the early twentieth century
that the idea that Romanian Orthodoxy might benefit from foreign ideas was
incomprehensible to many people. Manea Popescu concluded that ‘if we have
to establish our evangelism on a foreign basis, it would be better for us to stay
where we are and be happy with preserving what we have inherited’.5 As Nicholas
Doumanis has demonstrated through his study of religious change in Anatolia,
there was nothing in the popular practice of early twentieth-century Orthodoxy
that precluded an active and intimate cohabitation with neighbours from other
religious traditions. It was, rather, the institutional cultures of church-building
and nationalism coming on the back of centuries of humiliating exploitation by
imperial powers that instrumentalized Orthodoxy as a xenophobic, intolerant
religion.6 Frustration at state attempts to control the ROC and a growing
appreciation of the power that grassroots religiosity could give Church leaders in
4
5
6
Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1963); Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology (Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanst,
1979).
Manea Popescu, ‘Un ultim răspuns şi câteva lămuriri Preotului Teodor Popescu’, Noua revistă
bisericească, 1 April 1922, 13.
Nicholas Doumanis, Before the Nation: Muslim-Christian Coexistence and Its Destruction in Late
Ottoman Anatolia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Conclusion
197
a democratic nation-state further encouraged metropolitans, bishops and parish
priests to embrace antisemitic and fascist politics as a means of producing social
change when legal means failed.
Aristotle Papanikolaou and George Demacopoulos have recently asked
whether the resurgence of Orthodox(ist) ‘traditionalism’, which posits that there
is one, authentic and traditional form of Orthodoxy and other, less orthodox
strands, is a form of Orthodox fundamentalism that is seeking to find a way of
maintaining an Orthodox identity in a secular world.7 In inter-war Romania,
talking about Tradition was both about establishing the limits of Orthodoxy and
about reaffirming the dominance of one Church and one way of life in the face
of the rapid changes that came with modernity and state-building. Although
they occasionally gave lip service to the idea of Tradition as a creative force,
most Romanian writers of the 1920s saw it primarily in terms of its conservative
nature. Irineu Mihălcescu defined Tradition as ‘those teachings given by the holy
apostles … [that were] written down by the Church Fathers and thus preserved
unchanged until today in their writings and in the books of the church’.8 As
Pantelis Kalaitzidis notes, this is only one way of thinking about Tradition. ‘If
tradition is something that emanates only from the past’, he writes, ‘if its only
reference points are those bequeathed and handed down to us, then any change,
modification or reform is perforce a betrayal of the original, authentic truth.
Conversely, if tradition comes to us from the future – the future of God’s Kingdom,
of the eschatological Christ himself – then anything is possible, everything is
open, and nothing is set in stone.’9 However much Romanian Church leaders
might have hoped for a creative renewal of their faith, whether it be through
Social Christianity or paligenetic ultra-nationalism, they were terrified that they
would be losing something in the process. The spectre of Repenter Christianity
constantly reminded them that Orthodoxy did have its limits and that these
limits must be respected lest, in the words of Teodor Păcescu, ‘we pass beyond
Orthodox dogma in our desire to evangelize and unexpectedly find ourselves in
the camp of the sectarians’.10
7
8
9
10
Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos, ‘Introduction: Being as Tradition’, in
Fundamentalism or Tradition: Christianity after Secularism, ed. Aristotle Papanikolaou and George
E. Demacopoulos (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019), 7–9.
Mihălcescu, Catehismul creştin ortodox, 7.
Pantelis Kalaitzidis, ‘Challenges of Renewal and Reformation Facing the Church’, The Ecumenical
Review 61, no. 2 (2009): 149–50.
Teodor P. Păcescu, ‘Biserica in pragul anului 1922’, Noua revistă bisericească, 1 January 1922, 321.
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Index
alcohol 8, 12, 30, 103, 116, 118, 134,
148–51, 155–6, 161, 194–6
Andriene Theological Academy, Sibiu
40–1, 59
anti-sectarianism 3, 6, 8, 39–40, 125–39,
147, 154, 161, 166, 170, 179–80,
190, 194–5, 197
antisemitism 9, 40–1, 43–4, 46, 65, 80,
118, 122, 125, 132–4, 147, 150–1,
161, 163, 165, 179, 187, 197
atheism 1, 3, 133, 136, 151, 195
Bălan, Nicolae 5, 9, 33, 41, 68, 70, 94, 96,
132, 143–5, 147–8, 154, 161–6, 172,
175, 193–4, 200
baptism 7, 20–1, 23, 83, 102–3, 106,
111–12, 129, 131, 133–5, 182, 190
of the Holy Spirit 114, 116
Bible
authority of 30, 35, 45, 101–2, 135, 157,
180–1, 196
hermeneutics 9, 11, 15, 24, 29–31, 47,
103, 113, 121, 136, 181, 196
reading 8, 19–22, 24, 35–6, 40, 47,
103–6, 109, 120–1, 138, 145, 148,
152–3, 155, 161, 175–6, 181–2, 194–5
translation 1–2, 60, 135, 137, 172–4,
178, 188, 195
Bible Students 7, 15, 119–23, 125, 136
Brătianu, Ionel 68–9, 71–73
Călinescu, Ştefan 22, 26–9, 200
Callimachi, Ralu 172–3, 187
catechization 13, 20–3, 28–9, 135, 137–8
Catholicism 4, 32–3, 38, 44, 57, 60, 87–99,
144–5, 167, 183, 196
Central Theological Seminary, Bucharest
4, 170, 180
Chiricuţă, Toma 37, 201
Church
Adventist, Seventh Day 1, 7–8, 15, 36,
116–19, 125, 130–1, 134–6, 144,
147, 156, 170, 174, 176, 183–4
Anglican 1, 3–4, 14, 38, 46, 145, 147–8,
167, 178, 185–6
Baptist 6–10, 15, 36, 47 n.67, 101–12,
114, 116, 125, 132–6, 144, 172, 176,
184
Brethren (Creştini după Evanghelie)
1–2, 7, 9, 15, 36, 101, 109–10, 114,
125, 166, 176, 190
Bulgarian Orthodox 13–14, 45, 88–9
Evangelical Lutheran 6, 95, 111–12,
126, 131, 144, 177
Greek Catholic 5, 15, 31, 57–9, 63, 69,
72, 87–93, 95–9, 107, 131–2, 136–7,
144–5, 154, 174, 186
Greek Orthodox 12–13, 31, 45, 51–3,
56–7
Methodist 32, 107, 116
Nazarene 7, 15, 102, 111–13, 125, 127,
156, 195
Pentecostal 7–9, 15, 102, 113–16, 125,
132, 134
Reformed 6, 8, 32, 94–5, 112, 126, 144,
177
Roman Catholic 1, 5, 15, 32, 60, 63,
67, 88–9, 93–9, 112, 116, 131, 137,
160–1, 183
Romanian Orthodox passim
Russian Orthodox 9–12, 31–2, 45, 51,
61–2, 78–9, 127–8, 133, 157, 160,
171
Serbian Orthodox 2, 9–10, 12, 23, 45,
58, 60, 112, 127, 171, 195
church–state relations 3, 15, 38–9, 51–74,
81–2, 84–5, 90–1, 93–9, 106, 109,
112–13, 115, 117–18, 122–3, 127–8,
132–3, 137–8, 145–7, 178, 184,
190–1
cinema 85, 103, 130–1, 138, 191
Colan, Nicolae 31–2
Colporteur 107, 110, 119
communism 38–9, 46, 66, 133, 147, 171, 187
Comşa, Grigorie Gh. 3, 19, 29–30, 129–38,
194, 201
220
Index
concordat 15, 87, 93, 95–7, 145
Constitution of Romania 4, 54, 59, 69,
71–3, 96, 108, 138
conversion 6, 8, 47, 58, 98, 104–7, 110,
112, 114, 116, 121, 126–7, 129, 153,
156–7, 161, 169, 171–2, 175, 185,
187
Cornilescu, Dumitru 5, 170–89, 194, 196,
200–1
corruption, accusations of 2, 41, 92, 110,
134, 146, 151–2, 157, 161, 163–5,
178, 188
Crainic, Nichifor 48, 97–99, 165, 187, 202
Cristea, Miron (Ilie) 4, 9, 28, 33, 42, 46,
51, 64–73, 81, 85, 149, 187, 190,
193, 202
Cristescu, Grigore 30, 37, 41, 147, 194, 202
Cuza, A. C. 41, 151
Cuza, Alexandru Ion 53–4
Dorz, Traian 159, 166, 202, 204
Eliade, Mircea 44
end times, see eschatology
eschatology 77–8, 109–10, 115–16, 120–1,
123
ethnography 19–20, 22
Evangelicalism 2–5, 8–10, 45, 105, 125,
152, 161, 167, 173, 176
fascism 9, 40–1, 48, 97, 137, 153, 163, 165,
197
Federation of Christian Students’
Associations in Romania (FASCR)
42–9, 194
Feodorovna, Elizabeth 11–12
France 4, 38, 44, 53, 98, 119–20, 160,
172–3, 187, 195
Frollo, Iosif 98
Galaction, Gala 31, 33, 37–9, 46–8, 130,
171, 173, 179, 181, 183–4, 186–7,
194, 202
Georgescu, Ion V. 30–1, 41, 202
Georgescu, Pimen 42, 46
Germans, ethnic, see Saxons
Germany 4, 6–7, 32, 81, 98, 104, 108,
110–11, 117, 120, 144, 161–2, 166,
187, 195
God worshippers 12–13
Goga, Octavian 69, 165, 169–70
Great Britain 1–3, 32, 42, 45, 60, 71, 95,
97, 102, 107–9, 113, 147, 174, 176,
178, 184–5, 187, 189, 195
Grosu, Gurie 5, 27, 33, 41, 46, 62, 70, 72,
81–3, 128–9, 149, 193, 203
Gusti, Dumitru 44
Hacman, Eugenie 61
healing, by faith 113–4
holiness 12–15, 28, 36, 40, 101, 103, 109,
113–14, 117–18, 121, 139, 148,
155–6, 177, 184, 194–5
Hossu, Iuliu 64, 96
Hungarians 6–7, 44–5, 57, 59, 63–4, 67,
87, 90–6, 101, 111–12, 120, 133–4,
146, 151
icons 21, 23–5, 36–7, 84, 103, 118, 130,
138, 161, 184, 194
Ionescu, Marin C. 30, 188, 201
Ionescu, Nae 44, 46–8, 79, 97–9, 178, 203
Ionescu, Ştefan 39
Iorga, Nicolae 3, 42, 56, 73, 88, 203
Imbrescu, Ilie 130–1, 138, 203
Inochentie of Balta 78–9
Inochentism 15, 62, 77–80, 101, 125, 128,
147
Ispir, Vasile 39, 45, 127, 203
justification by faith 102–3, 158, 167, 169,
172, 176, 179–82, 196
lay ministry 1–5, 12, 32, 47, 54, 58–62, 70,
80, 91–2, 130, 138–9, 157, 189–90,
193, 196
Legion of the Archangel Michael 9, 40–1,
60, 163, 165
Levizor, Ioan, see Inochentie of Balta
literacy 1, 9, 19, 24, 84, 144–5, 148, 195
liturgy 5, 19, 21, 24, 30, 33, 41, 52, 72
n.113, 77, 84, 88–9, 111, 129, 131,
179–80, 194–5
Lord’s Army, the (Oastea Domnului) 5,
8–11, 15, 138, 143–67, 188, 193–4
Lossky, Vladimir 32
Lumina satelor (The Light of the Villages)
5, 143–66
Index
magazines, see newspapers
Magyars, see Hungarians
Marini, Ioan 159, 162, 166, 204
Martha and Mary House of Mercy, the
11–12
Mary, Mother of God 21, 25, 45, 103, 118,
162, 177, 179–80, 183–4
Mehedinţi, Simion 37, 42, 67
Meteş, Ştefan 32
Meţianu, Ion 62–4
Micu-Klein, Ion Inochenţiu 89–90
Mihălcescu, Irineu 5, 33, 41, 131, 167, 171,
179–80, 182, 184, 186, 194, 197, 204
military chaplains 54, 186
Ministry of Denominations 45, 53, 55,
119, 126, 131, 169, 190
missionaries
Orthodox 8, 10, 14–15, 62, 85, 88,
126–39, 154, 166, 183
Protestant 1, 3, 7, 45–6, 48, 103–4, 107,
109–10, 116, 121, 177, 183
Mladin, Nicolae 41
Moga, Vasile 58, 61
Moldovan, Valer 69, 91
monasticism 26–7, 77–80, 84, 130, 138,
160, 172, 178
Morușca, Pomponiu 40
Moţa, Ion 163–6, 204
Munteanu, Nicodim 21–2, 46, 171 n.14,
173
music, see singing
Nanu, Dimitrie 37, 178, 204
National Christian Defense League 9, 41,
83, 151
National Liberal Party 41, 51, 68, 73, 89,
193
National Peasantist Party 41, 68–9, 74
National Union of Christian Students in
Romania (UNSCR) 43, 45–7
Nazarie, Constantin 170, 184, 194, 204
Neaga, Nicolae 40
neo-Protestants, see Repenters
newspapers 3–6, 9, 13–14, 27, 54, 59, 62,
79, 83, 97, 106, 110, 112, 119, 125,
128–9, 138, 143–4, 152–3, 162–4,
175, 185–6, 195–6, 198–9
Niţulescu, Nicolae 172–3
Noua revistă bisericească 35, 175, 180–3,
188
221
Old Calendarism (Stilism) 5, 15, 77, 80–5,
101, 125, 194
Orthodoxism 48, 96–7, 188
Păcescu, Teodor 31, 35–36, 179–80,
182–3, 186, 194, 197, 205
pacifism 112–13, 118, 122
Pâclişanu, Zenovie 92, 205
Pârvulescu, Sebastian 56, 88, 205
Patriarchate, Romanian Orthodox 15, 51,
73, 193
peasants 9–10, 15, 19–20, 22, 30, 57–8, 78–85,
101–23, 125–39, 141, 143–60, 190
persecution 12, 57–9, 62–3, 65, 67, 79–80,
84, 91, 93–5, 104, 108, 112, 115,
118–19, 122, 126, 132, 138–9, 145,
175, 186, 190–1
philanthropy, see poverty
Pișculescu, Grigorie, see Galaction, Gala
Plămădeală, Antonie 11
Poctian, Vasile, see Pocitan, Veniamin
Pocitan, Veniamin 41, 89, 205
police 8, 12, 43–4, 64, 79, 82–5, 95, 108,
110, 112–15, 117–23, 125, 132, 138,
155, 161, 164, 184, 187–91, 193
Popescu, Manea S. 180–3, 194, 201
Popescu, Teodor 5, 130, 169–70, 175–91,
194, 205
Popescu-Mălăeşti, Ioan 5, 40, 194
Popescu-Mozăceni, Ion 41
poverty 13, 29, 44, 55, 128, 134, 137–8,
146, 151, 185
prayer 2, 8, 21–6, 29–30, 37, 47–8, 52,
64–5, 83–4, 103, 106, 109, 114–15,
117, 126, 130, 137, 150, 154–5, 158,
172, 175, 179–80, 189, 195
preaching 9, 27–31, 37, 40, 78, 105–7, 110,
115, 117, 127, 129–30, 137, 143,
145–9, 151, 154–5, 157–8, 160, 170,
175, 178–9, 184, 186, 190, 194
priests
and politics 40–2, 52–3, 66
criticism of 1, 56, 59, 119, 132, 134,
136–7, 178, 188
education of 1, 30–1, 39–40, 45, 55–6,
59–60, 63, 137, 170, 180–1, 194, 196
role of 26–7, 30, 37–40, 52, 129–30, 143
proselytism 85, 104–7, 110, 125, 132,
134, 152–3, 155, 157, 175, 184–5,
189–90, 195
222
Index
Protestantism 1, 6, 32, 35–6, 45, 47–8, 139,
147, 161–2, 167, 172, 176–8, 181–6,
194–6
Puiu, Visarion 5, 27, 30, 33, 41, 83, 139,
193, 205
Racoveanu, Gheorghe 41
Radu, Vasile 171, 173
Rebirth (Renaşterea) movement 5, 39–40,
193
reform, religious 1, 4–5, 9–11, 14, 32, 33,
35–41, 58–9, 61–2, 81, 92, 111, 151,
194, 196
religiosity, lack of 1–3, 35–6, 136, 149
repentance 5, 8, 12, 25, 36, 78, 103, 111,
115, 151, 157–60, 165
Repenters 6–10, 14–15, 33, 36, 46, 62, 80,
99, 101–23, 125–39, 147, 151, 155–9,
161, 166–7, 174, 189–91, 193–7
Romanian Christian Students’ Association
(ASCR), see Federation of Christian
Students’ Associations in Romania
(FASCR)
Romanul, Miron 62–3
Rouse, Ruth 1–4
Rushbrooke, James Henry 107–8
Russia 9–12, 31–2, 42–3, 45, 51, 61–2, 66,
72, 74, 78–80, 82, 84, 93, 98, 101,
104–5, 116–17, 119, 125, 127–8,
133, 157, 160–1, 171, 173, 193
Rusu, Alexandru 92
Sadoveanu, Mihail 37
Şaguna, Andrei 59–61, 64, 69
saints 23–4, 78, 80, 103, 117–18, 162,
179–80, 183–4, 194
Savin, Ioan Gheorghe 41, 133, 205
Saxons 6–7, 67, 101, 104, 109, 119, 134
schools 13, 19–22, 26, 36, 57, 59, 64, 67–8,
70, 85, 94–6, 106, 110, 117, 126–8,
133, 136–8, 144–5, 156, 162, 171,
180, 184–5
Scriban, Iuliu 4–5, 11, 24, 30–33, 81, 98,
162, 167, 170–1, 173, 175, 184, 185,
194, 205
secularization of church property 26–7,
53, 55, 93, 132
Simedrea, Tit 48, 84
singing 25, 85, 107, 117, 128, 130, 134,
138, 155–6, 158–60, 175, 177–8, 189
Social Christianity 14, 38–40, 44, 47, 49,
60, 196–7
socialism 122, 171
Solidaritatea (Solidarity) 5, 39, 175
soteriology 102–3, 111, 125, 135, 158, 169,
177, 180–2
Stan, Liviu 41, 60
state socialism 13, 79, 112, 133, 166, 190–1
Stănescu, Vartolomeu 5, 9, 14, 33, 38–42,
44, 60, 71, 126, 137–8, 175, 193, 206
Stăniloae, Dumitru 32
Stork’s Nest, the 5, 9–11, 15, 169–91, 194
students 1, 4, 13–14, 20–1, 30–2, 40–9, 67,
127, 130, 143, 151, 163, 165, 170–1,
175, 194
Şuluţiu, Alexandru Şterca 59
Switzerland 4, 7, 95, 104, 109–11, 120,
170–1, 177, 184–5, 187, 195
Take and Read (Ia şi citeşte) 5, 193
teetotaller (trezvenniki) movement 12
temperance, see alcohol
tradition 11–12, 23, 25, 47, 60, 71, 97, 146,
161, 181, 193, 196–7
Trifa, Iosif 5, 137, 143–67, 175–6, 194,
196, 206
Tudor, Sandu 47–8
United States of America 32, 42, 45–6, 48,
104–5, 107–8, 112–14, 116, 120–2,
134, 147, 152–3, 157, 165, 171, 174,
176–7, 195
Velimirović, Nikolaj 23
Vulcănescu, Mircea 44, 47–8
White Cross fraternity 13–14
Witnesses, Jehovah’s, see Bible Students
women 3, 11–14, 38, 44, 79, 110, 114, 117,
122, 126, 134, 146, 149, 171–2, 175,
185, 189
World Christian Student Federation 1, 4
YMCA 14, 42–9, 176, 178, 196
Zoe movement 12–13